YONKERS BEATS: A DISCUSSION GROUP
Thursday April 25, May 2, and May 9 @7 PM EST via zoom
THE YONKERS TRILOGY
by Patricia Vaccarino
YONKERS Yonkers!
The Heart of Yonkers
So Not Yonkers
Patricia Vaccarino’s Yonkers Trilogy captures a grand time in Yonkers history when the Getty Square area was a hodgepodge of small merchants, tenements, and quaint, centuries-old buildings. What made Yonkers exceptional and different from other cities was its many hills and, of course, its people. The Yonkers Trilogy captures the hopes, dreams, and ambitions of working-class heroes in the 1970s. Please join us for a journey to the past. We promise a discussion that is fun, nostalgic, and in true Yonkers spirit, controversial.
The discussion group is offered for three consecutive weeks on Thursday, April 25, May 2, and May 9 @7 PM EST via zoom. Each session will focus on one book in the trilogy. All three books are available at the Yonkers Public Library or at the Barnes & Noble on Central Avenue in Yonkers. The books can also be ordered online and are available in Print, as eBooks and audiobooks. A discussion guide is available for free by contacting patricia@prforpeople.com.
Book One: YONKERS Yonkers!: A Tale of Race and Redemption
Thursday April 25@7 PM EST via zoom
Cookie Colangelo is an unlikely heroine. She is going down the wrong path until shy black boy Herman Lynch comes into her life. Born with a harelip, Herman Lynch is a black B-boy—a natural dancer, who has had no formal dance training. He lives near Slow Bomb, the Schlobohm Housing Projects. The other black boys don’t like Herman and think he’s not black enough. The Italian girls of Yonkers don’t like Cookie, saying she’s too white. Together, Cookie and Herman explore the heart of racial prejudice in working-class Yonkers circa 1969-71.
Book Two: The Heart of Yonkers
Thursday May 2 @7 PM EST via zoom
From the edge of the Hudson River, we travel with fifteen-year-old Cookie Colangelo into The Heart of Yonkers. Cookie has been slow to mature sexually. When her sexual awakening does occur, it’s a huge explosion, all-consuming and emotionally powerful. She desperately wants a boyfriend but will not settle for a dumb Yonkers guy. Then she meets Vietnam War Vet Stanley de Falco and falls hard. Many characters from the first Yonkers book are back. New characters are introduced. We meet Jimmy the Midget, who owns the Midget Bar on top of hardscrabble Nodine Hill.
Book Three: So Not Yonkers
Thursday May 9 @7 PM EST via zoom
Cookie Colangelo works in a crummy job at a chain drug store. Her boss openly fondles Cookie and the other girls who work there. When she catches two young black girls shoplifting in Getty Square, she becomes the unwitting catalyst for the eruption of a riot and gets fired from her job. In her struggle to survive, she steals several hundred thousand dollars. From Max’s Kansas City to the Upper East Side celebrity restaurant Elaine’s, Cookie Colangelo faces a grim reality—the world is rigged against everyone who is poor or from the working class.
About the Author
Patricia Vaccarino is originally from Yonkers, New York. After college, she traveled across the country in a battered Chevy Impala on I-40 and up the California coast on Pacific Highway 101 to “see America” and landed in Seattle, where she worked as a paralegal in antitrust law, and later went to law school.
She began writing professionally and was asked by a film production company, Kaye Smith Productions (founded by Seattle businessman Lester Smith and Hollywood celebrity Danny Kaye), to do their Public Relations outreach—that was her start in P.R. She founded Xanthus Communications, a national P.R. firm, and the media company PR for People®, where people share their news with the world.
Patricia Vaccarino has written award-winning film scripts, press materials, content, books, essays, and articles. Some of her essays and articles can be found on PRforPeople.com and on YonkersBooks.com. She has written three works of historical fiction that take place in Yonkers, and the monograph The Death of a Library: An American Tragedy about the razing of the Yonkers Carnegie Library.
Registration for this event will close on April 25, 2024 @ 7:00pm.
Program Description
Event Details
Patricia Vaccarino’s Yonkers Trilogy captures a grand time in Yonkers history when the Getty Square area was a hodgepodge of small merchants, tenements, and quaint, centuries-old buildings.The trilogy captures the hopes, dreams, and ambitions of working-class heroes in the 1970s. Please join us for a journey to the past.
For more details about what will be discussed each week, take a look at the program outline.
Yonkers Beats: A Discussion will be held over Zoom. The meeting ID is 868 5228 8372.
