Product Description

At fifteen, sick of her unbearable and increasingly dangerous home life, Janice Erlbaum walked out of her family’s Brooklyn apartment and didn’t look back. From her first frightening night at a shelter, Janice knew she was in over her head. She was beaten up, shaken down, and nearly stabbed by a pregnant girl. But it was still better than living at home. As Janice slipped further into street life, she nevertheless attended high school, harbored crushes, and even played the lead in the spring musical. She also roamed the streets, clubs, bars, and parks of New York City with her two best girlfriends, on the prowl for hard drugs and boys on skateboards. Together they scored coke at Danceteria, smoked angel dust in East Village squats, commiserated over their crazy mothers, and slept with one another’s boyfriends on a regular basis.

A wry, mesmerizing portrait of being underprivileged, underage, and underdressed in 1980s New York City, Girlbomb provides an unflinching look at street life, survival sex, female friendships, and first loves.

“A fast and engrossing read in the spirit of Girl, Interrupted.”
–Entertainment Weekly

“Gripping . . . a wry, compelling memoir of what it means to stand up for yourself, especially when no one else will.”
–Bust

“How satisfying to watch Erlbaum survive adolescence and produce a smart, engaging book.”
–The New York Times Book Review

“Erlbaum’s survival is hard-won, the journey rendered with page-turning intensity.”
–New York Post

“A fast and engrossing read in the spirit of Girl, Interrupted.”
–Entertainment Weekly

“Gritty . . . perversely riveting. You want her to survive.”
–The Washington Post Book World

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #120552 in Books
• Published on: 2007-03-06
• Released on: 2007-03-06
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 272 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Erlbaum, a columnist for Bust, left her Manhattan home at 15 after her mother reunited with Erlbaum's abusive stepfather. Landing first in a shelter and then a group home, Erlbaum—shattered by her mother's choice—embarks on a treacherous course of self-destruction. Casual sex with a series of brutally uncaring boys coupled with daily drug and alcohol abuse become her antidote to the violence and racism in the child-welfare system housing her. Her isolation and loneliness threaten to swallow her whole. Yet when Erlbaum's mother invites her home (the dreaded stepfather gone for good), things don't improve. Erlbaum has more freedom, which allows more opportunity for trouble. At 17 she leaves again (this time to live with an older boyfriend), becomes addicted to the cocaine so plentiful in the 1980s New York club scene and nearly dies from an overdose. Through Erlbaum's adolescence, she often seems a willing victim. In her chaotic senior year of high school, she begins writing stories, attempting to put the life she's been living into perspective. Her memoir (comparable to Koren Zailckas's Smashed) reads like a neorealist novel. Sharp yet poignant, raw and vivid, it illumines the dirty underside of American girlhood and brings it to harrowing life. (Mar.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From School Library Journal
Adult/High School–The author's childhood was not a pleasant one. Her mother's string of abusive boyfriends and husbands had left her with no choice; after her mom kicked her last stepfather out, Erlbaum told her, If you take him back, then I'm leaving. When she was 15, she left her Manhattan home after her mother once again reunited with the man. She spent several weeks in a shelter and eventually ended up in a group home. She had casual, unprotected sex with a string of boys and abused alcohol and drugs. Just over a year after she moved out, she moved back in with her now-single mother, and the book's title (a play on the author's last name) was realized: life as a high school student clashed with the cocaine-fueled club scene of the 1980s. This memoir illustrates the conflicting desires of adolescence–to fit in, to be loved, and to be independent. The writing is concise and engaging, but, most of all, it's honest. Erlbaum doesn't try to excuse her behavior; rather, she analyzes why she went down that self-destructive path and what made her change her ways. Readers will find solace in the knowledge that, despite the lack of structure in her home life, she managed to pull it all together. She worked at an after-school job, starred in a school play, graduated high school, and got into college.–Erin Dennington, Chantilly Regional Library, Fairfax County, VA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
"What that white bitch doin' here?" "Same as you, bitch, she ain't got noplace else to go." "Here" is the gritty homeless shelter 15-year-old Jan entered after leaving her mother to fester in a dysfunctional marriage. Her 14 months in New York's social welfare system are marked by prejudice (directed at Jan by predominantly black shelter residents) and a parade of fierce, memorable characters, from "Shanita Who Could Squirt Breast Milk" to a juvie alumna who challenges newcomers by asking, "You ever get hit with a lock in a sock?" Halfway through the narrative, Jan rejoins her mother, at which point the book's title (a play on the author's last name) begins to make more sense; hormones, resentments, and insecurities detonate furiously as she and her new-wave high-school pals fish for thrills in the cocaine-fueled club scene of 1980s New York. The rounds of self-destructive behavior make for less captivating reading than the firsthand accounts of teen homelessness, but memoir readers who enjoy tales of harrowing, idiosyncratic coming-of-age will still embrace Erlbaum's rueful self-regard and savage humor ("Group Therapy was always a clusterfuck"). Jennifer Mattson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Customer Reviews

A Jolting and Compelling Account
The book, Girlbomb: A Halfway Homeless Memoir, tells the story of 15-year-old Jan, whose serially marrying mom has latched onto a real jerk of a man. She finally tells her mom to make the choice: Him or me. And when the mother chooses the guy, Jan goes from heating soup to grabbing her backpack and walking out the door.

She manages to find a shelter, where she stays for several weeks. This is not a sugar-coated story. This is a story of other residents threatening her with knives. Racial tensions. The very young girl who slips away and later is spied at a Port Authority men's room, clearly prostituting herself. Jan bonds with some girls who disappear from her life. It's not a great place to be.

Her next step is a group home, which is slightly better. Except by now, Jan has discovered night clubs and cocaine and cigarettes and booze.

One element to the story that strikes me as so interesting, having never been a homeless teenager on the streets of New York, is how Erlbaum kept her act together. With very little structure in her home, when she had a home, and then living in a shelter, Erlbaum managed to go to high school. She maintained school friends. She was in the school play. She got into college. She eventually had a somewhat longterm and loving relationship with a guy.

But the lifestyle extracted a toll. She had sex with boys she didn't like, much less love. She had drug problems. Her friends were unsupportive. She lied, and she stole.

At times, the book feels like a cautionary tale, a relatively modern-day and truthful Go Ask Alice.

Other times, the book feels like an exploration of dumb luck. You steal from work, but skip going the day they make arrests? You leave home, become "halfway homeless," but manage to score a leading role in the school play and get into college? You leave your friends, and by minutes you miss the guy having the mishap that leaves him in a coma?

Sometimes the book seems to rise above the specific matter of Erlbaum, New York City and homeless youths. I personally felt the book echo in my soul. The issues of sexuality, of confusion, of friendships, parent-child relationships, of high school reputations and repercussions could have been my issues in the suburban Midwest in the same era.

I kept having this sense of deep memories being shaken loose. I used to get fed up, wanted to run away, get out, go to New York and try things on my own. In Girlbomb, I see what I would have been up against.

I didn't know whether I would have been friends with young Janice, or been terribly afraid of her.

She wasn't always the sweetest and nicest girl, the true-blue friend or the ideal daughter. It's an honest book, one that neither apologizes nor brags about the facts.

Let's not forget this: When we read a book where the subject is so compelling, it's very easy to overlook the writing. When we talk about this book, we tend to discuss the story, the social implications, the woman who is now Janice Erlbaum.

We rarely talk about the actual prose. And to me, this is a sign that the writing is perfection. The writing doesn't stand in the way of Erlbaum's story, doesn't lend a false air or a sense of melodrama. It's vivid, concise, humorous, conversational. It's not showy or overwrought.

This is a book I highly recommend. If you have teen-age daughters, you might read it and consider whether they ought to read it, too.

I'm not just saying this because she's my friend. This is truly one of the best memoirs I've ever read.

Articulate, Witty, Unassuming
Articulate, witty, and unassuming, Janice Erlbaum has presented her audience with a masterwork. She guides us through the roughest times of any young woman's life - namely, high school.

Of course, a memoir focusing only on the difficulties of, say, cheating one's way through Chemistry while starring in the Drama Club's Spring production, wouldn't capture us in the way that her "halfway homeless" memoir does. We're invited to tag along as young Janice finds herself alone in Manhattan after following through on an ultimatum given her mother. From a Catholic teen runaway shelter, to an Upper West Side group home, to a Lower East Side studio, Erlbaum illustrates the confusion, the adaptation, the pain and the humor through which she must wade in order to find the girl in the mirror who keeps reminding her that she is still fragile, somewhere behind all the bravery.

"Girlbomb" is a powerful read that will touch teens, mothers, those who've overcome their own personal struggles, and the rest of us, who just like to peer at the trauma and humor that forever mark the lives of the fiercely independent. With this, her first book, Erlbaum has triumphed as neatly in the publishing world as she did years ago in the New York City of the mid-eighties. And best of all, this memoir is verifiably true!

Brutally honest and wonderfully sardonic
There are moments when you want to just cry but then Erlbaum exposes herself in such a genuine manner, adding her inimitable touch of humor, that you find yourself laughing at the most bizarre circumstances. Which is much like life because sometimes you have to laugh or you are gonna cry--or worse. Thankfully Erlbaum didn't go for worse, learned how to laugh at herself, and dared to share her story with the world. It should be required reading for any young woman trying to make sense of herself, her world, and her life. Why? Well she won't find the answers to the life, universe, or anything . . . but she might find it okay to look at herself in the mirror and smile. Thank you, Janice, for sharing yourself.