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PRODUCT
Last Summer on State Street: A Novel
Product Description:
Price:
$14.99
Detailed description:
- PEN Open Book Award finalist
- Chicago Writers Association Book of the Year Award winner
- Stephen Curry Underrated Literati Book Club Pick
Named a Best Book of Summer by Good Housekeeping, Chicago Magazine, The St. Louis Post Dispatch, Chicago Tribune, Veranda, The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Publishers Weekly, and more!
“[A] powerful novel…. Tragic, hopeful, brimming with love, Wolfe’s debut is a remarkable achievement.”—New York Times Book Review
For fans of Jacqueline Woodson and Brit Bennett, a striking coming-of-age debut about friendship, community, and resilience, set in the housing projects of Chicago during one life-changing summer.
Even when we lose it all, we find the strength to rebuild.
Felicia “Fe Fe” Stevens is living with her vigilantly loving mother and older teenaged brother, whom she adores, in building 4950 of Chicago’s Robert Taylor Homes. It’s the summer of 1999, and her high-rise is next in line to be torn down by the Chicago Housing Authority. She, with the devout Precious Brown and Stacia Buchanan, daughter of a Gangster Disciple Queen-Pin, form a tentative trio and, for a brief moment, carve out for themselves a simple life of Double Dutch and innocence. But when Fe Fe welcomes a mysterious new friend, Tonya, into their fold, the dynamics shift, upending the lives of all four girls.
As their beloved neighborhood falls down around them, so too do their friendships and the structures of the four girls’ families. Fe Fe must make the painful decision of whom she can trust and whom she must let go. Decades later, as she remembers that fateful summer—just before her home was demolished, her life uprooted, and community forever changed—Fe Fe tries to make sense of the grief and fraught bonds that still haunt her and attempts to reclaim the love that never left.
Profound, reverent, and uplifting, Last Summer on State Street explores the risk of connection against the backdrop of racist institutions, the restorative power of knowing and claiming one’s own past, and those defining relationships which form the heartbeat of our lives. Interweaving moments of reckoning and sustaining grace, debut author Toya Wolfe has crafted an era-defining story of finding a home—both in one’s history and in one’s self.
“Toya Wolfe is a storyteller of the highest order. Last Summer on State Street is a stunning debut.”—Rebecca Makkai, New York Times bestselling author of The Great Believers
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Product group:
Categories: Best Books of 2024 So Far
Product name:
Last Summer on State Street: A Novel
Price:
$14.99
Amazon Customer –
What did I like about this book? Everything…who should read it, everyone. This book will be with me for a very long time.
Amazon Customer –
If you are from Chicago, this book will hit hard. Those projects are gone now, but the author really evokes what it was like to live there, the terror and the humanity. Very moving.
JCFan –
This book is a story about several families while they lived in the Robert Taylor projects on the south side of Chicago, as the high rises were being torn down. The narrator’s perspective and understanding of people and events deepens over time as she shares what happens as a child. This story is poignant and shared simply and eloquently. Highly recommend.
A. Stoner –
This coming of age story took me to places I’d only ever seen from the outside and lead me into a childhood no one should have to experience. Enlightening, heartbreaking and uplifting all at the same time, the authors voice is raw and real. You won’t want to put the book down. Even though it’s a work of fiction, it’s so realistic you realize this could be told by anyone growing up in similar places anywhere in America and that is truly sad. This story will stick with me for a long time and that is what true art does.
Amazon Customer –
Started slowly for me but stick with it. Graphic without too much mayhem and describes life in the projects of Chicago in a way I never considered.
Bonnie J. Clark –
When I first started to read this book about the projects on the south side of Chicago, it reminded me of the projects on the east side of Columbus Ohio. My dad (a prevalent carpenter at the time) helped build the red brick towers known as Sawyer place. Several years later, after the towers have been turned over to the city as low income housing, I remember him driving me and the rest of our family by the Towers. Those beautiful buildings had fallen into disrepair, the grounds around them, I had once been a beautiful park, no longer contained the beautiful trees and flowers that had once adorned the buildings.
Like the buildings in our story, those that moved into the buildings were not properly educated or equipped to keep them nice. They became infiltrated with gangs, druggies, those supplying the drugs, and simply very poor.
I can only imagine, after reading this book, how difficult life was for those who tried to keep their head “above water“.
I could say that this story was actually “eye-opening“ for me, but yet it wasn’t! This was a very poignant, disturbing, and yet heartwarming story. So well explained by the author, especially about her youth and the contacts she called friends.
If you’re looking for something “unbelievable“ but true, especially about life on the periphery of big cities, this is the one to read.
I cannot, nor will lie, say that I enjoyed the story. I will look forward to discussing this with my friends at our next book club meeting. How many of us grew up in big cities, found ourselves in some of these situations, or even had friends who lived in projects.
Kudos to her author for bringing her life and the life of others to the forefront.
Amazon Customer –
I love the author’s perspective on various circumstances throughout the entire book.
Hyacinth E. Palmer –
This book has been the realist book I’ve read this year! I know it’s fiction but the elements are truly real and felt. I did not grow up in the projects but could identify with so many scenarios in this book. I remember the bad kids, the gangbangers, the bad kids on the block, the one girl that everybody was scared of…all of it. I was angry to the point of tears at what happened to Tonya. I was triggered by Stacia but had to remember, these were children.
The story is told from 12 year old ” Fe Fe” Felicia’s point of view. I was so angry while reading through the frustrations of “living while black.” The injustices are real, not fiction. Thank God for the Brown family and that witness. I am also thankful for the “Ms. Pierces” in the world of education that understand that teaching is a calling, not just a vocation. Felicia would be me, a child called to purpose but the pain of walking it out, daunting. I see so much of myself in Felicia. By the end of this book, I found resolve, peace and was happy to see that Felicia was walking in her purpose. I will never forget Tonya. I was broken about what happened to Meechie and finally, I know what is like to grow up without a father 💔. Thank you Ms. Wolfe for a well crafted story!