Their Brooklyn

Wary of reading 19 rah-rah stories about a place already filled with insanely proud people, BB tried not to like Brooklyn Was Mine, an anthology of essays by local authors about Brooklyn past, present, and pre-boom.

But I was defenseless from page one. The Union Street Bridge, a couple hundred feet from my first Brooklyn apartment, figures heavily in Phillip Lopate’s introduction, and with every reference to it — "the thump-thump of cars passing over the bridge’s metal plates"; "this strange combination of industrial, residential and bucolic" — my heart did a little nostalgic leap.

Not that you have to be a card-carrying Brooklyn lover to like these stories. In one of the most moving essays, Brooklyn is merely a backdrop as Colin Harrison gives us a touching look at his relationship with his son, through the prism of pep talks and little league games on ball fields from Marine Park to Dyker Beach.
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Jonathan Lethem’s Jackson Pollock-like word burst, "Ruckus Flatbush," is fantastic, of course.

So yes, this book had me at hello, and that was before I learned that all of its proceeds were being donated to DDDB’s anti-Atlantic Yards legal fund — yet another incentive to put this on your shelf.