Doris Goran Newman took the long road to get to Bayonne.
Her story isn’t only in the miles between Yonkers to Detroit, then back to New York, Hoboken and Jersey City, but also in her memories.
Newman was a child of the Great Depression, and though there have been some classic books written about people’s experiences during that era – including John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath – Newman wanted to write about her own experiences, not as a poor migrant farmer, but as a middle class urban dweller, and the impact the Depression had on a family that didn’t want to acknowledge that the economic floor had fallen out from under them.
‘Steinbeck wrote about the experiences of people in the dust bowl, my experiences in the city were different.’ – Doris Goran Newman
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Influenced by Gloria Steinem’s book Revolution from Within, Newman started writing her book FDR and Me, A Small Girl in the Great Depression about seven years ago.
She didn’t start out to write a book, but wanted to explore her own experiences and reflect on how the Depression affected her childhood.
“I hadn’t really thought about it before,” she said.
Her book explores the experiences of a middle class family trying to maintain a life style when they really do not have any money.
A young girl comes of age
The story covers her life from eight years old to about 12, a kind of journey from innocence to experience, in which she learns some of the harsher realities involving attempts to keep up appearances when the world is crumbling.
Yonkers, she said, was a lot like Bayonne, with a similar ethnic mix of many people struggling in the same way her family did to cope with the altered situation.
Her father owned a radio repair shop. He was a good-hearted man who gave people credit when it was not in his financial interest, and he eventually went broke.
“In those days, you had to replace tubes in a radio, but instead of people paying in cash, they told him to put it on the books,” she said. “He was a very easy-going man, and he did.”
Newman believes her book very much reflects contemporary times, saying some of the strategies President Barack Obama has undertaken are similar to those done during the Great Depression by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
She felt the impact as a middle class child in several ways, especially because her parents never talked to her about their situation.
But she got the message of their economic plight. She remembered one year going to Jewish camp with other kids, and seeing them getting packages and other things that she didn’t get.
“I was wearing hand-me-down clothing, so I knew,” she said.
In writing her book, she realized that she did not get everything she needed from her family at the time – especially an honest appraisal of their situation.
“There were always whispers behind closed doors,” she said.
Eventually the family moved to Detroit, an unhappy experience that split the family for a while and brought her and her mother back to New York. Eventually, Newman graduated from Pratt University with a degree in design, and took up a career as an illustrator for several prominent companies. She designed her own book cover to reflect her interest in painting as a young girl.
In the early 1980s, she moved to Hoboken, where she got involved with the arts scene for a time, and then moved to Jersey City, before winding up in Bayonne, where she has lived the last 20 years.
Reaction to the book has been ‘amazing’
People her age who also grew up in the Great Depression get a lot of nostalgia out of it recalling things like Nancy Drew mysteries and Shirley Temple movies, but also get catharsis as they look back through her recalling those days as an adult, she said.
Many people from that time period recall their own experiences after reading the book. But it seems that even younger generations are connecting to it.
“People tell me it’s a good read,” she said. “I’m pleased and astounded that the different generations like it. It’s just about my life.”
The book has been picked up by three local book clubs. The book sells for $19.95, and can be found on line through Barnes & Noble and Amazon.com, although on Amazon, it is listed simply as FDR and Me.
Al Sullivan may be reached at asullivan@hudsonreporter.com.