Many books have been written about class and race. Not many books, however, have been written from the perspective of the only white kid growing up in a housing project on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Enter Dalton Conley’s autobiography, “Honky,” which details his childhood and maturation during the late ’70s in a city that was moving from the offbeat artistry and idealism of the late ’60s to the harsh realities of cocaine and disco.
As struggling artists, Conley’s parents simply cannot afford any other way for themselves, Dalton and his younger sister Alexandra to live. “Slumming it” is not their idea of an avant-garde lifestyle — it comes out of economic necessity. As a painter and a writer, respectively, Steve and Ellen Conley were from upper-middle-class East Coast families. After making it to New York City and having two children, the Conleys dedicated themselves first to family and only then to their career-oriented creative endeavors. Some of the most touching moments of the book take place between family members, particularly ones in which Conley’s eccentric mother, Ellen, gives out small cash rewards to her son in return for him promising that he will do everything he can to stay safe. Such safety measures include keeping ten dollars of “mugging money” in his shoe to offer a would-be assailant and promising not to ride in the back of city buses.
As a young child, Dalton Conley does not recognize that he is different from those around him until he is treated as an outsider. Because Conley is the only white child enrolled in P.S. 4, his parents have to choose to either enroll him in the “Black” class, the “Puerto Rican” class, or the “Chinese” class. They choose the “Black” class. Corporal punishment is doled out at the whim of the teacher, and bloody knuckles are a common occurrence for all students, with the exception of Dalton. Instead of feeling lucky about being exempt from physical pain and humiliation, Dalton is confused. His parents are also confused as to why such punishment is given to any child. Eventually, Dalton moves on to the “Chinese” class, where he is literally a world apart from his classmates. This doesn’t necessarily faze Conley, but his parents decide to make a change.
By virtue of a fake address, Conley attends elementary school with the children of NYU professors in Greenwich Village, where he is exposed to class differences. A bus ride home after school brings him back to the realities of race distinctions. Despite these crash courses in American social stratification, Conley grows up like any other “normal” kid. He plays Little League, arcade games, and Dungeons and Dragons. He learns the value of having a job and earning money. He gets in trouble for stealing from the local luncheonette and for ditching school to play Defender at the local galleria. The only person Conley ever mentions calling a “Honky” — an ethnic slur that his parents did not approve of — is the Puerto Rican tough guy, Sean, who pulls a knife to Conley’s throat over a baseball mitt.
Conley’s childhood was not an experiment, and in his memoir, he does not treat it as such. The introspection that comes through in “Honky” is a product of time, written after almost two full decades of reflection. Looking back, he recognizes the impact of events that, at the time, just seemed to be a part of life on the wrong side of town. After the crossfire shooting of one of Dalton’s best friends, Jerome, Dalton’s mother decides that they need to leave the area. The family moves to the Upper West Side, to government-subsidized housing specifically made for artists. Here, Conley focuses on school, gaining entrance to Stuyvessant High, and eventually receives a scholarship to the University of California at Berkeley. It is in California that he begins to fully realize the impact of his childhood experiences and what they meant to him on a personal, not political, level.
“Honky” is a story of growing up, friendship and sacrifices made for family. It is funny, touching, and realistic. Dalton Conley did not set out to write a sociological study of growing up “urban.” He has written those books already — books about race and society as a professor at Yale University. In “Honky,” it seems as if his only goal is to put his childhood on paper, simply because it was a bit different and because it made him who he is today.
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