How You Are

When William S. Repsher published Skipping Through the Graveyard in My Puke-Stained Suit in 2017, he thought detailing his childhood years in rural Pennsylvania through the 1970s was the only part of his life he could chronicle. He soon realized he had a wealth of material regarding his 30+ years living in New York City and set about compiling How You Are to cover the years 1987 to 2019. it began with a small spark of energy he felt listening to Velvet Underground albums at college in the mid-80s, through a disastrous trial-and-error year in 1987, to the realization at the end of that year that he could move to New York City and give it a shot. What followed was a decade living in the Bronx, learning how to live in a city that was in the middle of a crack epidemic and how to navigate what at first seemed like an alien environment. While he thought he was moving to the city to reinvent himself, he soon realized he was only evolving into an adult, embracing his past and finding out how to use those working-class values in a place where they weren't so alien. As the line from the book's introduction notes, there's how you see yourself and how you are. That concept applies as much to personal change as it does to self acceptance. After a decade in the Bronx, he moved to Queens and encountered a whole new environment to assimilate. Although he had moved to a predominately white area, he soon found himself in a rapidly gentrifying working-class neighborhood that in ways felt more alienating than anything he encountered in the Bronx. Along the way, Mr. Repsher describes the people, experiences and places that helped shape his views of the city. From Manny Upstairs in the Bronx boarding house to the dog who couldn't bark in Astoria, he offers snapshots of city life over the years that give a down-to-earth, "neighborhood" view of New York that is often portrayed in far more fantastical lights.