Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
Belonging on the shelf with Jeannette Walls's The Glass Castle and Ishmael Beah's A Long Way Gone, Leaving Breezy Street--the stunning account of Brenda Myers-Powell's brutal and beautiful life--is a critical addition to the American canon.
Fourteen years old, poor, Black, mother dead, two babies to feed and clothe, and a grandmother who is not full of motherly kindness, to put it mildly. What money-making options are open to a girl like Brenda Myers?
When Breezy, as she came to call herself, hit the streets of Chicago as a prostitute in 1973 she was barely a teenager. But she was pretty and funny as hell, and determined to support her daughters and make a living. For the next twenty-five years, she moved across the country, finding new pimps, parties, drugs, and endless, profound heartache. And she also--astonishingly--managed to find the strength to break from a brutal world and not only save herself but save future Breezys.
Great, compelling memoirs can bring us into worlds that have been beyond our comprehension and make us "get it." What these books tell us is NOT that we can all move beyond the lives into which we were born. The lesson is that everyone deserves to be truly seen by others and offered a path forward.
Synopsis
Told in an inimitable voice, Leaving Breezy Street is the stunning account of Brenda Myers-Powell's brutal and beautiful life.
"Careful--don't think prostitution is just about money. It's never just the money. It's about slipping in at all the wrong places. Getting into dangerous situations and getting out of them. That's exciting. That's what you want. But you want something else, too."
What did Brenda Myers-Powell want? When she turned to prostitution at the age of fifteen, she wanted to support her two baby daughters and have a little money for herself. She was pretty and funny as hell, and although she called herself "Breezy," she was also tough--a survivor in every sense of the word. Over the next twenty-five years, she would move across the country, finding new pimps, parties, drugs, and endless, profound heartache. And she would begin to want something else, something huge: a life of dignity, self-acceptance, and love. Astonishingly, she managed to find the strength to break from an unsparing world and save not only herself but also future Breezys.
We have no say into which worlds we are born. But sometimes we can find a way out.