Customer Reviews

Honky

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I found this book both conmfusing and troubling. As a black man who grew up on the Lower East Side of New York, I find conley's observations out of sync with my own. First of all: the Masaryk Towers--the "project" where he lived--was not a PUBLIC housing project, nor was it low income. Its population was far more mixed than the projects where I grew up. His stories, while well written at times, seem forced--as if to prove a point: white people have privileges that black people do not. I think we know this already.

As a person of color, I felt a bit hurt by the book's constant opposition between white sucess and black failure. If it's stereotypes the author is trying to attack, he sure doesn't succeed. Black people are type cast in this racial drama. My life growing up was filled with rituals, joy, ideas. His picture of black life is filled with anger, tragedy, and sadness. Where is the positive, complex side of black life on the Lower East Side.

As for the book's title: I've never called ANYONE honky. Was Conley called honky? The title of the book--like so many of Conley's stories--typecasts black people in a confusing and troubling way. Our lives are as complicated as white people's. I wish this book had shown this. Too bad. I think Conley means well. He just doesn't get it.

I found this to be an interesting and frustrating book. Dalton is a decent, though self-indulgent writer, who is able to create good narrative momentum. He has some interesting if not very deep things to say about race and class and childhood. But everything positive about the book was deeply undermined for me because it contains a great deal of factual error and distortion. I know this because my family figures prominently in his story. He was my brother's best friend during a critical period of their childhoods, which Dalton recounts at considerable length. And much of what he says is simply wrong. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that he wrote things as he remembers them and did not deliberately embellish the story. But the inaccuracies are significant because they pertain to the very heart of what he is trying to say. When Dalton transferred to PS41, he moved into a very different socioeconomic sphere, and the contrast between his earlier experiences and the new world he entered affected him deeply. Those contrasts--and the meanings he draws from them--are a great deal of what he tries to make sense of in the book. And that is what makes his inaccuracies so troubling. The portrait he paints of my family is of an extremely privileged, wealthy clan of economic and cultural elitists. That makes a better story, but it is also false. It makes me wonder just how accurate his other memories are. Is what he says about other people, places, and experiences as distorted as what he says about my family? His book is a clear lesson in just how subjective and unreliable memoirs are as sources of information about anything or anyone other than their authors. If you read this book, you'll know what Dalton thinks his childhood was like. No more, no less.

About midway through his excellent, humorous and poignant memoir of growing up white in the mostly minority inner-city that comprises the edges of Manhattan's Lower East Side, Dalton Conley strives to comprehend the forces that enabled him, unaccompanied by his non-white peers, to transcend the urban blight that characterized both the outer and inner landscapes of those living in his neighborhood. "I'll never know whether it was my mother's protectiveness, my expectations and aspirations, or simply my race that spared me from a worse fate," writes Conley. "I will never know the true cause and effect in the trajectory of my life. And maybe it is better this way. I can believe what I want to believe. This is the privilege of the middle and upper classes in America - the right to make up the reasons things turn out the way they do, to construct our own narratives rather than having the media and society do it for us." Honky, at its core, is Conley's construction of his own narrative, a thoughtful examination of the trajectories that were at force in his childhood, as well as a personal and moving account of his gradual childhood acknowledgement of the significance of his whiteness and the privileges of race and class while growing up in multiple, unequal worlds. Clearly his book has a lot to teach - and it does - but in a thoughtful and non-preachy manner.

As a coming-of-age story, Honky is a study in contrasts: a child of white, progressive, and poor parents growing up in an otherwise Black and Hispanic housing project, an inner-city boy predominantly schooled in upper middle class public schools, and a fledgling, awkward teenager slowly seeing and coming to understand what he lyrically claims are the "invisible contours of inequality" that peopled the many worlds he simultaneously inhabited. His account is as refreshingly straightforward as it is honest, as, for example, when he realizes after moving from the inner-city with his family into a mostly white neighborhood during his high-school years his own self-proclaimed social awkwardness. "I paced in circles," writes Conley, "like a dosed up laboratory animal, wishing I were back in our old neighborhood, where at least I had my skin color to blame for not fitting in."

Conley's aim throughout his memoir is not so much to preach but to demonstrate, and by demonstrating, uncover what are essentially both the paradoxes and determinants of race and class in America. "If the exception proves the rule," he declares, "I'm that exception." He is forthright about the "cultural capital" of his family, that which allowed them, for example, to work the public schooling system to their advantage, using the addresses of friends in better neighborhoods as their own so that the author and his sister could attend better schools - an advantage seldom available to their minority peers. And never more aware is Conley of the lingering scars he harbors, both physical and emotional, that are the remnants of the violence that plagued his neighborhood in the 1970's and 80's and of which he carries today in his adulthood.

Honky is a must-read for those interested in complexities of race and class in America today. It provides a first-hand account of one who was forced to grapple with the language and idioms of whiteness in a way that most non-minority Americans take for granted. And his take on poverty in America is especially clear and bleak, a reflection by one who was able to both live in and transcend its grasp. Conley, now a sociologist at Yale, who is trained to develop statistical models to examine sociological problems, quips at the end of his memoir that "what's gained in story is lost in numbers." As regards to Honky we are fortunate that is the case.

Brian T. Peterson, New York City

I would ordinarily give this book 4 stars, since I really like to reserve a 5 for something truely exceptional, but I feel that this book became all it really could have become. Essentially, that is an interesting (if not gripping) tale of white guilt linked to the oppression of minorities and the lower classes. I have to admit- the subject is trite and it loses something because of it. We live in a world that delights in reminding us of these differences so often that a heartfelt story like this one can really suffer. But it shouldn't have to. What we have here is a genuine, relativly sober account of just what it feels like to grow up white, poor, and, strangely, a minority. This book is NOT written for those who have suffered under racial prejudice or financial difficulty. This book is for the upper and middle class white people who have not experienced anything like this before. It is an eye-opener to the generally sheltered and privilaged. This is where it can do some serious good. I would not recommend this book to those who harbor the "they did it to themselves" additude about the lower class. If you come from this mindset, put on your thinking cap and come in with an OPEN MIND. Everything in this story comes together beautifully, and Conley does an admirable job at crushing the countless events of his childhood into a handfull of poignant and important experiences that serve to entertain and teach all at once. You will walk away from this book with a deeper appreciation and understanding for those individuals so often scoffed at and deemed worthless, stupid, lazy, if not all three. From an asthetic standpoint, this book is short and fast enough to pack a punch and take little enough time to churn-out more than enough in return for your services. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED TO THE WHITE, WEALTHY AND SHELTERED YOUTH OF OUR AMERICAN SUBURBS. If you are one of these, you know it well, and should really give this book a try. I would know: I am one.

If you want to read a book about the real issues of race and class most people don't talk about (but you don't want a lot of sociology jargon), this book is for you. The stories are both funny and sad. Conley is hard on everyone, but especially himself. I couldn't put it down.

While I agree Conley could have elaborated a bit more on the motivations of his friends and relatives, this was a captivating read. I give it a higher rating. I think Conley writes well, and this is a fine view into his life and times. I enjoyed reading Honky. I'd recommend it, especially for junior and senior high school students.

My upbringing in NYC held parallels to Conley's. I am White, raised in East Elmhurst, then Laurelton, Queens, 10 years earlier than Conley. While both my parents (mother is partly Jewish, father R. Catholic) were workaholics, their politics were also Liberal, - they revered Martin Luther King and envied the Freedom Riders. We lived in integrated neighborhoods which became predominantly Black (we spent every summer in the country, too), and I was raised to respect all. It was sometimes difficult to be a 'minority' (White) child. Malcolm X lived 2 blocks away on the same avenue, and there were Black kids who asserted their pride, ostensibly as bullies. I was actually called a Honky, more than once. This book renewed my sense of 'White guilt', since I got to move away and become successful in a predominantly White geographical area. I had a choice - which isn't always the case for people of color. This book is well worth reading.

I picked up this book after reading Conley's sociology book, "Being Black, Living in the Red." The latter is first rate--I found it very, very helpful. I was curious about the formative experiences of the author of THAT book. Except for that, I don't know that I would have finished this one. Conley gives sketchy details of all characters except himself--for instance, we get no idea why his father forsook his "artist" identity to take on steady work, though this seems an important event, with which Conley deals in half a page. Even of himself, he is less forthcoming than it initially seems--for instance, he tells us of his various misdeeds and psychopatholgies, but he does little more than report them. ("Show, don't tell," someone should have instructed him.) I found myself frustrating with a pile of, "But what about . . . " questions I wanted the author to have addressed. ("So what about your Mom's short-lived writing career? How did that affect her and your family?" "How did your OCD affect your place in your various neighborhoods? Did whites/middle class folk deal with it differently than blacks/lower class?")

I think this book is more a set of object lessons in the author's (very insightful) understanding of race and class than a compelling or convincing memoir. We get the details relevant to the lessons, not those that would make a full-fledged story.

I grew up in the lower east side around the same time as Dalton. The Baruch projects was my home from birth to age 27. I was able to enjoy this book at three levels. One, is was a validation of my experiences. I was a nuyorican nerd who felt like I belonged and didn't belong. I believe Dalton had that feeling as well. I also thought the book indirectly educated people about identity; although white, Dalton was one of us, a lower east sider. Lastly, I enjoyed it as an american story. Alot of people made it out of there and did well.

My only criticisms have to do with some of the time-lines. They don't match my memory (e.g., drugstore hostage dates may be off. Stuff like that was memorable because it was rare). I also wished that Dalton would have addressed issues around racial identity of the the people in the Lower East Side. Puerto Ricans adopted alot of african-american ways. Also, there were white puerto ricans who had some of the advantages that Dalton could have-Albert Ortega, Ph.D.

Tierd of the feel sorry for me memoir circuit, Honky was a welcome change. His portrayal of his childhood was always, touching and vulnerable, but nonetheless he knew he had advantages over the children around him because of his skin color.

I would like to shake Mr. Conley's hand because that guy got it right for a change--not all is fair and equal.