Elevate Difference

Reviews tagged Brooklyn

Raising Brooklyn: Nannies, Childcare, and Caribbeans Creating Community

When Tamara Mose Brown had her first child in 2004, she began going to different Brooklyn, New York parks on sunny afternoons. In each, she found dozens of West Indian nannies caring for the babies and toddlers of the largely White middle- and upper-income denizens who lived nearby. Questions about both the nannies' work and the race, class, and gender dynamics of their lives prompted Brown—the Canadian-born daughter of Trinidadian immigrants—to begin spending time with these women. Their conversations were eye-opening. For one, Brown came to realize the centrality of paid childcare to U.S.

His Own Where

June Jordan was the very best kind of revolutionary: someone whose love and fearlessness were boundless, someone who never told anything less than the absolute truth, someone who measured out joyfulness and rage in equal parts.

Holy Rollers

Holy Rollers is a story of sex, drugs, and Orthodox Judaism. In the late 1990s, a group of drug dealers used young Orthodox kids from Brooklyn as mules to carry ecstasy back from Amsterdam to New York City. On the surface, this fictionalized account of these real events seems so simple: the sinful preying on the innocent.

Superstition

Anyone who follows music press would agree that Brooklyn has been a hotbed of indie creativity during the past decade. The styles run the gamut from freak-folk to experimental noise, to sugarcoated pop, to singer-songwriter confessionals, to good old fashioned rock and roll.

Heart of the Old Country

Mike’s life isn’t going anywhere quickly. A townie car service driver who lives with his widower father, he barely tolerates his girlfriend of four years, Gina, and spends most of his time contemplating an escape from his South Brooklyn stomping grounds. After a friend is brutally murdered with Mike driving the assailants’ getaway car, Mike doesn’t flee. Instead, he accepts a coveted job working for one of the local mob bosses running packages—contents unknown—between an Ethiopian hustler and a house full of Hasidic Jews. His tough guise doesn’t last long, though.

Mitzvah Girls: Bringing Up the Next Generation of Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn

A “mitzvah” is colloquially translated as “a good deed,” but this Hebrew word actually means “commandment,” and observant Jews believe in 613 “mitzvot.” The commandments structure daily life and religious rituals, such as prayer, dietary habits, and romantic and sexual relationships.

Prospect Park West

Brooklyn’s famously high-end and yuppie Park Slope neighborhood is nearly a character itself in Amy Sohn’s Prospect Park West. The book follows the lives of four women living in the neighborhood. There is Melora Leigh, a troubled actress, who joins the neighborhood co-op for good PR. Her time there ties her to Karen Shapiro, an overly protective mother and social climber desperate for a new apartment in the best school district.

Secret Cog

Talk Normal’s Secret Cog, a five song EP, begins with a noise sample that is not quickly placed—a curious noise that immediately demands attention and perks the listener’s ear.

A Hole In A Fence

For most films under an hour long, the first ten minutes are critical. In this short window, the story’s framework is established, point of view is explained, and the viewer basically gets to decide if they’re half as committed to following the plot as the film’s director was to sharing his or her vision.  During the first few minutes in A Hole In A Fence, I had no idea what I was watching.

Guide to Brooklyn: 2007

Has the ganglial network that is today's Internet annulled the need for books, especially guidebooks?

Life Support

HIV isn't the death sentence that it used to be, but that doesn't mean it isn't affecting people's lives in enormous ways. Life Support is a new film starring Queen Latifah, inspired by a true story, that tackles the complexities of living with the virus, particularly as low-income, women of color. This film couldn't come at a better time, as infection rates continue to grow among young, African American girls.

Divorce Songs

With a title like Divorce Songs, I expected the music on this album to represent feelings of separation or disunion, and United States did not disappoint. The Brooklyn post-punk band, which is likened to Fugazi, Cursive and Sonic Youth, presents eight jagged anthems about struggling and surviving in the city.
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