Falling Room

By: Eli Hastings

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Paperback | 1 September 2006

At a Glance

Paperback
180 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
21.8 x 14.0 x 1.0

Paperback

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Coming of age poor in spirit in the America of plenty is an old story that is yet endlessly new, beginning afresh every time a confused teenager tries to make sense of his privileged place in the world. Eli Hastings got a head start on this when his idealistic, permissive parents divorced, and he sought answers by sneaking out at night to play chicken with freight trains, write graffiti, and get high with friends. This youthful rebellion included an arrest and weekend in jail for drug possession and later jail for an act of civil disobedience during the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle. Hastings recounts how a privileged, white, fiercely leftist American male tries to make sense of himself in relation to the contrary people and situations he finds in books and his travels to Cuba and Central America.

Falling Room is the tale of how one man matures through the sometimes violent blessing of social change and finds himself--and a sense of purpose--through the loss of innocence and naivete. Reflecting on the firsthand experience of hip-hop and substance abuse, of the fracturing of family, the loss of his father, and of the imperialism of the United States, Hastings's story offers a new and moving look at how families, nations, and individuals survive and heal.

Industry Reviews

"Falling Room is a wild romp of memoir, politics, and experimentation. This is a book about the origin of protest--about finding, challenging, understanding, and ultimately forgiving the father and the fatherland. It's full of tremendous talent, beauty, and energy."--Sarah Messer, author of Bandit Letters and Red House "Time and again I came across passages that just floored me--images that were so vivid and right that they catapulted me right to the scene of the story, turns of phrases that captured some elemental truth about the way things are, the way people think and behave."--Philip Gerard, author of Cape Fear and Creative Nonfiction: Researching and Crafting Stories of Real Life "In Falling Room, Eli Hastings moves beyond mere anger to write with a passion that fuses pain and tenderness, anger and sympathy. I emerged out the other side of this immensely readable book bruised but full of wild hope."--Sebastian Matthews, author of In My Father's Footsteps "Falling Room is musical. It is worldly. It is intimate and concerned. Again and again I was impressed by the great democracy and tenderness in these pages, by these essays' remodeling of the urban and the pastoral, by their revelation of landscapes disparate and glaring. I finished feeling I'd been party to a mad and jubilant trip. A writer like Eli Hastings gives me hope in many things."--Brad Land, author of Goat: A Memoir

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You Can Find This Book In

Non-Fiction Biographies & True Stories Biographies Reference, Information & Interdisciplinary Subjects Interdisciplinary Studies Regional Studies

Burlington Northern
Gettin' Up
Mulching
Moonfaced Man
The Professor
Intersection
Falling Room
Wake
Grant County Jail
Good, Alright, Fine
In the Mouth of the Bull
Sky
Coming Away
Dispatches from a Prohibited World
Out in Front
My Father's House
Over the Pass
Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.

Falling Room

At a Glance

Paperback

Industry Reviews

Shipping

How to return your order

Defective items

You Can Find This Book In

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Longlisted for the 2026 Womens Prize for Non-Fiction