Each week, an accomplished published author takes over the YEM Twitter account. Each week, the YA author will answer questions, tell stories, and give advice on our social media. This week young adult author Patricia Vaccarino will be taking over our Twitter account.
Patricia runs Patricia Vaccarinoowns Xanthus Communications, a national P.R. firm, and the internet company, PR for People, where people share their news with the world. As an accomplished professional writer, Patricia Vaccarino has written award-winning film scripts, press materials, content, books,essays and articles. Some of her essays and articles can be found in her press kit on PR for People. She has written a series of business books. She has also written several works of fiction. YONKERS Yonkers!is her most recent book. Check out her Author Page on Amazon. Ms. Vaccarino graduated with honors from the University of Rhode Island, and also has advanced education from the University of Puget Sound School of Law (now Seattle University School of Law). She divides her time between downtown Seattle and the Oregon Coast.
Patricia is the author of YONKERS Yonkers. Yonkers is a picturesque city on the Hudson River, but beneath the surface racism runs rampant and often explodes into the open. It’s 1969 when blacks and whites don’t mix in this highly segregated, working-class town. Gutsy white girl Cookie Colangelo is a small-time drug dealer in a hardscrabble working-class town. Cookie is going down the wrong path until she meets shy black boy Herman Lynch. Everywhere Cookie goes, she keeps bumping into Herman. He is a natural dancer and helps Cookie to fix her trick knee. Cookie protects Herman’s deepest secret. He lives near the Slow BombHousing Projects, where the other black boys don’t like him and think he’s not black enough. The Italian girls of Yonkers don’t like Cookie, saying she’s too white. They experience racism at the hands of other kids and grown-ups, especially red-headed hag Fran Ochiogrosso, who is their greatest nemesis. Cookie and Herman explore the real truth underlying the macho working-class mindset and the heart of racial prejudice in Yonkers, circa 1969-71: Woodstock, the Vietnam War, a bad President in the White House, and the fundamental breakdown of social order. Raw, honest, and nuanced, it’s not the American dream but it is American reality.
To follow along with this week’s Twitter takeover, follow our Twitter account @YoungEntmag and follow the hashtag #YAAUTHORTAKEOVER.
