This is an achingly beautiful true story of hello and goodbye as well as everything in between. Told in a captivating, candid voice Patti Smith’s Just Kids is a return to a New York that no longer exists, a place where the gifted young loved, dreamed, and hoped. It is 1967 and Smith had worked in a toy factory, lived with her parents in South Jersey, and was expelled from Glassboro State Teachers College when she became pregnant. She gave the baby up for adoption, and a short time later snitched $32 then boarded a bus for New York City.
When she reached the City Smith discovered that the Brooklyn friends with whom she hoped to stay had moved, but she found someone else - the young Robert Mapplethorpe. He showed her another place to stay, thus began a relationship that lasted until Mapplethorpe’s death from AIDS in 1989. This is their story, a tender, beautiful one as each sought artistic fulfillment.
They lived in the Chelsea Hotel, where Smith could walk into the bar next door and see Janis Joplin, Grace Slick or Jimi Hendrix. Figures such as William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg walk in and out.
Just Kids is an absolute gem of a memoir that as been called “a poetic masterpiece.” Don’t miss it.
- Gail Cooke
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