A Wider World: Portraits in an Adolescence
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*Bronx Primitive: Portraits in a Childhood* was chosen as one of the twelve best books of the year by *The New York Times* in 1982. Now we have Kate Simon's honest, moving, and beautifully written sequel, *A Wider World*, about growing up in the Depression-ridden but vital New York of the 1930s. With a spirited sense of self-preservation and without a trace of sentimentality, the author explores the wondrous flowering and momentary terrors of her adolescence.
In that bittersweet time, the boys never had enough money to take out the girls and the girls often had crushes on each other and their teachers. Sex was strange but fascinating, and eventually led Kate to set up housekeeping with a boy, to her father's horror and the envy of her friends. Birth control was haphazard and abortions were primitive. The need to learn about everything - life, literature, politics, love, the city - was urgent.
Kate Simon has remembered it all with great clarity and wry humor. In her remembering, these events might have happened yesterday, were they not so utterly of a time and place. In the immediacy of the emotions that reverberate on every page this memoir is completely contemporary and timeless in its appeal.
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This book gave a view of the 1920s that was unlike any other depiction I've encountered. First, the book gave light to a more modern society than I expected, with many elements reminiscent of the 1970s. There are schools where math isn't required and English classes are scrapped in favor of poetry groups and drama classes. There are kids of high school age who leave home and couch-surf, or, if lucky, get their own apartment (sometimes shacking up with a boyfriend or girlfriend). Abortions are surprisingly commonplace and discussed openly as a “right of passage”. The second surprising element is the lack of mention of major American historical events, namely Prohibition and the Great Depression. Prohibition is referred to only once or twice, such as an aside about how at a club there were glasses on the bar because “Prohibition concealed the bottles”. The Great Depression was hinted at only when the author mentioned her friends' fathers being out of work. Granted, this is an autobiography and not a history book, but it was surprising how little impact they apparently had upon her life.
Bottom line: reading this book feels exactly like sitting down with a surprisingly candid grandmother and having her tell you stories about her teenage years.
