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Life for Me Ain't Been No Crystal Stair

One Family's Passage Through the Child Welfare System

Author Susan Sheehan
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Paperback
$18.00 US
Knopf | Vintage
On sale Sep 06, 1994 | 192 Pages | 9780679754503
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Through this story Sheehan charts a terrifying legacy of institutional abuse and neglect, and paints a haunting portrait of children growing up without childhood. Sheehan's protagonist is Crystal Taylor, the fourteen-year-old daughter of a heroin addict. While following Crystal's haphazard movement from institution to institution, and tracing the parallel journeys of her mother and her child, Life for Me Ain't Been No Crystal Stair offers searing accounts of poverty, addiction, and abuse--and poses inescapable questions about our society's commitment to its children.

"Told in an assertive, direct, journalistic style...The horrific impact of poverty on the lives of urban young people finds almost perfect expression."--San Francisco Chronicle
Susan Sheehan is the author of eight works of nonfiction. In 1983, she received a Pulitzer Prize for Is There No Place on Earth For Me? She was also a staff writer at The New Yorker. View titles by Susan Sheehan

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Through this story Sheehan charts a terrifying legacy of institutional abuse and neglect, and paints a haunting portrait of children growing up without childhood. Sheehan's protagonist is Crystal Taylor, the fourteen-year-old daughter of a heroin addict. While following Crystal's haphazard movement from institution to institution, and tracing the parallel journeys of her mother and her child, Life for Me Ain't Been No Crystal Stair offers searing accounts of poverty, addiction, and abuse--and poses inescapable questions about our society's commitment to its children.

"Told in an assertive, direct, journalistic style...The horrific impact of poverty on the lives of urban young people finds almost perfect expression."--San Francisco Chronicle

Author

Susan Sheehan is the author of eight works of nonfiction. In 1983, she received a Pulitzer Prize for Is There No Place on Earth For Me? She was also a staff writer at The New Yorker. View titles by Susan Sheehan

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