Life for Me Ain't Been No Crystal Stair : One Family's Passage Through the Child Welfare System

On October 7, 1984, Crystal Taylor gave birth to a baby boy whom she named Daquan. Crystal was only fourteen. She was living with a boyfriend whom she was too young to marry, and her mother was addicted to heroin and cocaine. So under the law, Crystal and Daquan became wards of New York State's foster-care system--a sprawling, often slipshod web of boarding facilities, halfway houses, and paid surrogates that cares for almost 60,000 children. Life for Me Ain't Been No Crystal Stair is the story of what happened to Crystal and Daquan, as well as to Crystal's mother, who herself had grown up in various foster homes. It is a story of three generations of poverty, addiction, and abuse--and also a story of astonishing human resilience. And Susan Sheehan tells it with the same flawless observation, humor, and compassion that she brought to her classic Is There No Place on Earth for Me? From the Trade Paperback edition. "Sylvia Frumkin," a highly intelligent young girl, became a schizophrenic in her late teens and spent most of the next seventeen years in and out of mental institutions. Susan Sheehan, a talented reporter, followed "Sylvia" for almost a year talking with and observing her, listening to her monologues, sitting in on consultations with doctors - even for a period sleeping in the bed next to her in a psychiatric hospital. "Sylvia Frumkin," a highly intelligent young girl, became a schizophrenic in her late teens and spent most of the next seventeen years in and out of mental institutions. Susan Sheehan, a talented reporter, followed "Sylvia" for almost a year, talking with and observing her, listening to her monologues, sitting in on consultations with doctors, even for a period sleeping in the bed next to her in a mental hospital Recounts the lonely, harrowing life of a diagnosed schizophrenic, "Sylvia Frumkin", whose experience has included frequent hospitalizations from childhood on, bouts with insulin comas, electroshock treatments, and drug therapy. The case of Crystal Taylor, who had a child at fourteen, and of the consequences of her homelessness and drug addiction on her child and grandchild A documented chronicle of a young woman's struggle with schizophrenia