Sharon Stonekey

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"Sharon Stonekey, in her surprisingly direct narrative creates three New York families with college age protagonists who won my affection with their charm, intelligence, and bravery. In a 1990 Manhattan exploding with the AIDS epidemic, theirs is a story of knowledge and redemption. Engaged with social and political issues of the time, Stonekey's characters traverse a city of contrasts and contradictions in a vortex of energy that held me from beginning to end."

-Barbara Blatner, Yeshiva University faculty; author of THE STILL POSITION.

5.0 out of 5 stars A Precious Ode to the Ones we have loved and Lost
Reviewed in the United States on April 17, 2023
-  P. Faith
Manhattan Crossing/Spuyten Duyvil Station is an ode to the ones we've loved and lost, the pioneers in the AIDS healthcare movement, as well as the stories of survivors of rape and incest, the Women's movement and Black power. In many ways, the book tells the stories of what happened to many people in the 1980's and 90's, but is also integrated with the philosophies, ethics and values of both feminism, and the Black Lives matters movements of the past decade.

Ms. Stonekey has a way of bringing her characters alive so the reader feels as if they themselves were experiencing what the characters experienced. Reading and watching the story unfold was heartbreaking, but also inspiring. If one knows some of the history of these times, one might guess where the storylines are going. But how they get there is not predictable, and keeps one on the edge of the seat as events unfold.

Ms. Stonekey does not shy away from how racism affected the characters of color in this novel, and does a fairly good job of writing about and integrating the racism of the 80's and 90's, with many of the more recent public instances of racism that inspired the Black Lives movement. One example of this was the unfolding of the friendship of one of the central white characters, with her black female friend who works in a woman's healthcare center. As the two friends navigate the intersections of their lives, they each have the opportunity to be allies for the other, with an awareness of how racism shaped and affected each of their stories. Their friendship is bumpy and uncomfortable, and truthful.

As someone who lived through the times of the emergence of AIDS, the burgeoning women's movement in the 1970's, I recognized some of these characters as people I might have been friends with. I remembered what it was like to find out someone I loved had been diagnosed with AIDS…or to learn and discover that many of the women in my life had experienced rape and/or incest and that this was not an anomaly.

Sharon Stonekey gives us the chance to open our hearts and minds to these memories, and to pay homage to those we lost, those who survived and those who helped and fought in the health care and reproductive rights battles that we are still battling. She also gives us permission to feel the excruciating truth of what happened behind closed doors to so many girls and women, and to know that the #Me Too movement did not come out of nowhere.

Thank you, Ms. Stonekey for daring to write these stories of our lives.