These Bronx tales tell the story of the city’s northernmost borough at its best and worst times — straight from the mouths of those who live, work or grew up there.
Author Emita Hill recounts the borough’s rough and tumble history in her book “Bronx Faces and Voices: Sixteen Stories of Courage and Community.”
The tales told in the 384-page tome — one of three recently released Bronx-themed books — were originally bound for the archives, Hill said.
It includes a series of audio interviews, conducted between 1982 and 1986, to document the borough during its tumultuous years of arson, crime and abandonment.
“We wanted to interview Mr. and Mrs. everyman — the ones who had lived through the worst of it,” said Hill, 78, a former Lehman College dean and vice president who also helped start the college’s Bronx Regional and Community History Project in the 1970s and 1980s.
Hill said she always had a desire to share the stories. She worked with Janet Butler Munch, an associate professor and Lehman’s Special Collections librarian, to compile some of the best anecdotes and release them to the world 30 years later.
“My hope is to have these stories of ordinary men and women at a time when everyone else wrote off the Bronx,” Hill said.
“People were living decent lives and working in their communities,” she added.
Another recent release, “The Bronx Memoir Project,” gives voice to current Bronx residents and aspiring writers who call the borough home and hope to shed the stigma of the Bronx’s burning past.
The Bronx Council on the Arts helped publish the collection of more than 50 short, autobiographical works that depict personal experiences.
The individual authors all took part in workshops conducted around the borough by the council’s writing center and its director Charlie Vazquez.
“People still cannot shake that image of the ‘Bronx is burning,’ but it’s been long enough,” Vazquez said.
“There is so much diversity,” he added. “It’s a really fascinating place that is working to redefine itself.”
Children’s book author Arlene Alda in 2015 will release “Just Kids From the Bronx,” a collection of success stories and reminisces about growing up in the borough.
Interviewees who share their tales of youthful days spent on the streets of the Bronx include Regis Philbin, Neil deGrasse Tyson and members of the graffiti collective known as Tats Cru.
The stories run chronologically and include a posthumous piece from former New York Times managing editor Abe Rosenthal.
“Bronxites have rarely had the opportunity to tell their own story,” Vazquez said. “It’s crucial that we share these stories.”
