Page 12 - Purchasing Power Black Kids and American Consumer Culture

Acknowledgments

Back in the days when "cut and paste" meant scissors and tape, I remem-
ber watching my mother and stepfather spend hours, and sometimes all
night, in frenzied editing sessions, putting together last-minute pasteups,
making calls to track down references and sources. On the opposite
coast, in California, I remember looking over my father's shoulder as he
spent hour upon disciplined hour hammering out manuscripts for books,
essays, plays. Having a novelist and playwright for a father, an editor for
a mother, and a stepfather who was a writer and contributing editor for
Life magazine, I have never expected writing to be easy. And it isn't. My
parents—Suzanne Abrams, Frank Chin, and Brad Darrach—have each
in their own way infused me with an appreciation for the power of lan-
guage, how to use it, play with it, mold it, and when to toss it out. I am
grateful to them for their example of how to undertake the discipline of
writing, and how to experience it as one of life's necessities, however
painful the endeavor.
At City University of New York Graduate Center, I was privileged to
work with professors who understood what I was after and who helped
me get to the heart of things. My advisor, Delmos Jones, was, in his
quiet way, my surest guide and sounding board. Vincent Crapanzano,
as an ever-present voice in my head, was my constant interlocutor,
whether he knew it or not, and remains so. Cindi Katz helped me enter
the world of children, in both practical and scholarly ways, and has
been my shining example of how to take kids seriously while having
fun. The ongoing support from and discussions I have had with John
Sherry have been invaluable to this book and my growth as a scholar.
After I had admired Russell Belk from afar for years, he provided a ma-
niacally detailed set of comments for this book for which I am especially

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