1970s New Orleans
A01=Stephanie Clare Smith
adolescence
and survival
attachment trauma
Author_Stephanie Clare Smith
caregiving for a parent with dementia
Category=DNC
Category=DNXP
Category=JBSF1
child abduction
childhood sexual assault
creative nonfiction
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
Genre-bending lyrical memoir
Guardian ad Litem and child welfare advocacy
Hurricane Katrina
isolation and abandonment
Louisiana
mother daughter relationships
resiliency
sink or swim thinking
statutory and aggravated rape
survivors
the importance of interconnectedness
the importance of meaning-making after trauma
trauma
violence against women
Product details
- ISBN 9781469678962
- Weight: 272g
- Dimensions: 140 x 216mm
- Publication Date: 13 Feb 2024
- Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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This is what it is to survive. You find what floats and you hold on. Even if it is smaller than you.
Holding on is all fourteen-year-old Stephanie Clare Smith can do when she's left home alone in New Orleans during the summer of 1973. As she seeks to ease her solitude through her summer school algebra class, her wandering in the city, and her friendship with a streetcar operator, adults—particularly men—fail her again and again, with devastating consequences.
Dreamlike and beautifully paced, this lyrical debut memoir traces the events of one harrowing summer and its repercussions throughout Stephanie's life, including her work with families in crisis and as a caregiver for the mother who abandoned her all those years ago. Through a mosaic of trauma and transcendence, memory and metaphor, scarcity and neglect, Stephanie reveals how she built connections in and to a world that had largely left her behind. Her hard-won survival echoes that of countless other survivors whose stories are never told, and her strength stands as a testament to the power of creativity.
Holding on is all fourteen-year-old Stephanie Clare Smith can do when she's left home alone in New Orleans during the summer of 1973. As she seeks to ease her solitude through her summer school algebra class, her wandering in the city, and her friendship with a streetcar operator, adults—particularly men—fail her again and again, with devastating consequences.
Dreamlike and beautifully paced, this lyrical debut memoir traces the events of one harrowing summer and its repercussions throughout Stephanie's life, including her work with families in crisis and as a caregiver for the mother who abandoned her all those years ago. Through a mosaic of trauma and transcendence, memory and metaphor, scarcity and neglect, Stephanie reveals how she built connections in and to a world that had largely left her behind. Her hard-won survival echoes that of countless other survivors whose stories are never told, and her strength stands as a testament to the power of creativity.
Award-winning poet and essayist Stephanie Clare Smith is a clinical social worker and mediator who works with at-risk families in the judicial system. She lives in Raleigh, North Carolina.
