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Liz Murray - Breaking Night: A Memoir of Forgiveness, Survival, and My Journey from Homeless to Harvard

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Liz Murray Breaking Night: A Memoir of Forgiveness, Survival, and My Journey from Homeless to Harvard
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Breaking Night: A Memoir of Forgiveness, Survival, and My Journey from Homeless to Harvard: summary, description and annotation

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Breaking Night reads more like an adventure story than an addiction-morality tale. Its a white-knuckle account of survival. . . . By age 6, Murray knew how to mainline drugs (though she never took them) and how to care for her strung-out parents. She showed uncanny maturity, even as a child, and later managed to avoid that malady of teenagers and memoir writers, self-pity. . . . Murrays stoicism has been hard-earned; it serves her well as a writer. Breaking Night itself is full of heart, without a sliver of ice, and deeply moving. (The New York Times Book Review) Liz Murray shows us that the human spirit has infinite ability to grow and can never be limited by circumstance. Breaking Night is a beautifully written, heartfelt memoir that will change the way you look your community, the obstacles in your own life and the American Dream. An inspiration, a must read. (Robert Redford) [Liz Murray] reminds us that the greatest acts of love and failure can occur side by side; that isolation and loss can give way to accomplishment and promise. She offers the awesome hope that, regardless of its past, a life can go beyond endurance and reach for triumph. She leave us with the memory of a child who clung to and refused to surrender the dignity of her soul. (Andrew Bridge, author of the New York Times bestseller Hopes Boy) As much as it is a memoir, Breaking Night is a primer on how poverty and drug abuse create a heartbreaking underclass of children, one that goes largely unnoticed. By the truly uplifting ending, Liz Murray has shown us the worst, and the very best, of America. (Haven Kimmel, author of A Girl Named Zippy and She Got Up Off the Couch) In the vein of The Glass Castle, Breaking Night is the stunning memoir of a young woman who at age fifteen was living on the streets, and who eventually made it into Harvard. Liz Murray was born to loving but drug-addicted parents in the Bronx. In school she was taunted for her dirty clothing and lice-infested hair, eventually skipping so many classes that she was put into a girls home. At age fifteen, Liz found herself on the streets when her family finally unraveled. She learned to scrape by, foraging for food and riding subways all night to have a warm place to sleep. When Lizs mother died of AIDS, she decided to take control of her own destiny and go back to high school, often completing her assignments in the hallways and subway stations where she slept. Liz squeezed four years of high school into two, while homeless; won a New York Times scholarship; and made it into the Ivy League. Breaking Night is an unforgettable and beautifully written story of one young womans indomitable spirit to survive and prevail, against all odds.

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This book is dedicated to three people whose love made it possible.

TO EDWIN FERMIN , for the years behind us, for the years ahead of us, side-by-side. Thank you for taking care of my father when we needed you. Thank you for sharing your dreams with me and for being my family. Thank you for being my no-matter-what. When I look at all the good in my life, inside all of it, I see you.

TO ARTHUR FLICK , for the fishing trips, the motorcycle rides, the camping and each one of our adventures that I will always cherish. Thank you for being my Guardian Angel and my hearts compass. You were right, Arthur, you do get to choose your family.

TO ROBIN DIANE LYNN a Trusting, Powerful and Giving woman. Robin, you are a beautiful soul and the embodiment of contribution. This world was blessed to have you in it. Because of you, so many of us are blessed still. Thank you for showing me what it looks like to stand in a commitment, come what may.

Dont let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.

COACH J OHN W OODEN

Those who wish to sing always find a song.

S WEDISH PROVERB

Breaking Night

URBAN SLANG FOR:
staying up through the night,
until the sun rises.

Contents

I HAVE JUST ONE PICTURE LEFT OF MY MOTHER. ITS 4 7, BLACK-AND-WHITE , and creased in different places. In it, she is seated slightly hunched, elbows touching knees, arms carrying the weight of her back. I know very little about her life when it was taken; my only clue is written in orange marker on the back. It reads: Me in front of Mikes on 6th St. 1971. Counting backward, I know that she was seventeen when it was taken, a year older than I am now. I know that Sixth Street is in Greenwich Village, though I have no idea who Mike is.

The picture tells me that she was a stern-looking teenager. Her lips are pressed together in thought, offering a grimace for the camera. Framing her face, her hair dangles in beautiful wisps of black, smokelike curls. And her eyes, my favorite part, shine like two dark marbles, their movements frozen in time forever.

Ive studied each feature, committing them to memory for my trips to the mirror, where I let my own wavy hair tumble down. I stand and trace similarities with the tip of my finger through the curve of each line in my face, starting with our eyes. Each pair offers the same small, rounded shape, only instead of my mothers brown, I have Grandmas rich yellow-green. Next, I measure the outline of our lips; thin, curvy, and identical in every way. Although we share some features, I know Im not as pretty as she was at my age.

In my years with nowhere to live, behind the locked bathroom doors in different friends apartments, Ive secretly played this game in the mirror throughout all hours of the night. Tucked in by their parents, my friends sleep while images of my mothers graceful movements dance throughout my mind. I spend these hours in front of their bathroom mirrors, my bare feet cooled by gridded tiles, palms pressed on the sinks edge to support my weight.

I stand there fantasizing until the first blue hints of dawn strain through the frosted bathroom glass and birds announce themselves, chirping their morning songs. If Im at Jamies house, this is just the time to slip onto the couch before her mothers alarm beeps her awake, sending her to the bathroom. If Im at Bobbys, the grinding noise of the garbage truck tells me its time to sneak back to the foldout cot.

I travel quietly across their waking apartments to my resting spot. I never get too comfortable with my accommodations, because Im not sure if I will sleep in the same place tomorrow.

Lying on my back, I run my fingertips over my face in the dark, and I envision my mother. The symmetry of our lives has become clearer to me lately. She was homeless at sixteen too. Ma also dropped out of school. Like me, Ma made daily decisions between hallway or park, subway or rooftop. The Bronx, for Ma, also meant wandering through dangerous streets, through neighborhoods with lampposts littered with flyers of police sketches and sirens blaring at all hours of the night.

I wonder if, like me, Ma spent most days afraid of what would happen to her. Im afraid all the time lately. I wonder where I will sleep tomorrowat another friends apartment, on the train, or in some stairwell?

Tracing my fingertips over my forehead, down to my lips, I long to feel my mothers warm body embracing me again. The thought sends tears streaming from my eyes. I turn to my side, wiping my tears away, covering myself with my borrowed blanket.

I push the feeling of needing her far out of my mind. I push it beyond these walls lined with Bobbys family portraits; past the drunken Latino men just outside, slamming down winning hands of dominoes, seated atop milk crates on Fordham Road; away from the orange blinking lights of the bodegas and over the rooftops of this Bronx neighborhood. I force my thoughts to fade until the details of her face blur. I need to push them away if I am ever to get some sleep. I need sleep; it will be only a few more hours before Im outside on the street again, with nowhere to go.

Ma 6th Street Greenwich Village 1971 Chapter 1 University Avenue THE - photo 1

Ma, 6th Street, Greenwich Village, 1971

Chapter 1
University Avenue

THE FIRST TIME DADDY FOUND OUT ABOUT ME, IT WAS FROM BEHIND glass during a routine visit to prison, when Ma lifted her shirt, teary-eyed, exposing her pregnant belly for emphasis. My sister, Lisa, then just over one year old, sat propped against Mas hip.

Reflecting on this time in her life, Ma would later explain, It wasnt supposed to turn out that way, pumpkin. It wasnt like me and Daddy planned for this.

Even though shed been on her own and in trouble with drugs since age thirteen, Ma insisted, Daddy and me were gonna turn around. Somewhere down the line, we were gonna be like other people. Daddy was gonna get a real job. I was gonna be a court stenographer. I had dreams.

Ma used coke, shooting dissolved white dust into her veins; it traveled through her body much like lightning, igniting her, giving the feel , however fleeting, of something forward-moving, day in and day out.

A lift, she called it.

She started using as a teenager; her own home had been a place of anger, violence, and abuse.

Grandma was just nuts, Lizzy. Pop would come home drunk and beat the crap out of us, with anythingextension cords, sticks, whatever. She would just go clean the kitchen, humming, like nothing was happening. Then just act like Mary-friggin-Poppins five minutes later, when we were all busted up.

The oldest of four children, Ma often spoke of the guilt she harbored for finally leaving the abuseand her siblingsbehind. She went out on the streets when she was just thirteen.

I couldnt stay there, not even for Lori or Johnny. At least they had mercy on Jimmy and took him away. Man, you bet your ass I had to get out of there. Being under a bridge was better, and safer , than being there.

I had to know what it was Ma did under bridges.

Well, I dunno, pumpkin, me and my friends all hung out and talked... about life. About our lousy parents. About how we were better off. We talked... and I guess we got high, and after that, it didnt matter where we were.

Ma started out small, smoking grass and sniffing glue. During the years of her adolescence, moving between friends couches and earning her living through teen prostitution and odd jobs like bike messengering, she moved on to speed and heroin.

The Village was a wild place, Lizzy. I had these thick, tall leather boots. And I didnt care if I was skinny as hell; I wore short shorts and a cape down my back. Yeah, thats right, a cape. I was cool, too. Jivin, man. Thats how we used to talk. Pumpkin, you should have seen me.

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