Sleepaway School: Stories from a Boy's Life

Like his brother before him, Stringer was surrendered to foster care, shortly after birth, by his unwed and underemployed mother—a common practice for unmarried women in mid-century America. Less common was that she returned six years later to reclaim her children. Rather than leading to a happy ending, though, this is where Stringer's story begins. The clash of being poor and black in an affluent, largely white New York suburb begins to foment pain and rage which erupts, more often than not, when he is at school. One violent episode results in his expulsion from the sixth grade and his subsequent three-year stint at Hawthorne, the "sleepaway school" of the title.
What follows is an intensely personal, American journey: a universal story of childhood where childhood universals are absent. We experience how a child fashions his life out of the materials given to him, however threadbare. This is a "boy-meets-world" story, the chronicle of one child’s struggle simply to be.

A boy-meets-world story from the author of Grand Central Winter, the acclaimed memoir of life on the streets of 1980s New York.

The Washington Post - Wil Haygood

… [Stringer's] quiet tale has enough touching moments of little-boy endurance that, when finished, one is simply inclined to say: Well, bless his heart.

Lee Stringer lived on the streets in the '80s and '90s. His first book, Grand Central Winter, was an international bestseller in 1998. He serves on the board of Mamaronek Libraries and Project Renewal. In addition to other memoirs, Stringer's writing has appeared in The Nation, New York Times, and Newsday.