in the sociology doctoral program, and affiliated with the Institute for the Study of Societal Issues at UC Berkeley.
She applied the “Page 99 Test” to her new book, At Home in the City: Growing Old in Urban America, and reported the following:
Readers who flip to page 99 of At Home in the City will receive a glimpse into core themes at the heart of my book: grief, loss, place, memory, coming together, and unconventional place- based communities. This snippet showcases the voices of older adults I met during my five- year ethnographic study, trying to understand how they navigated a range of late life challenges, including health setbacks, depression, gentrification, financial struggles, the accumulated losses of neighbors, friends, and family, and other everyday challenges.Visit Stacy Torres's website.
On this page, they share the complex emotions stirred in mourning a special place they’re about to lose—a mom-and-pop bakery in Manhattan that had become something of a public living room. At this point in the book, the store hadn’t yet closed, but as lease renewal negotiations broke down between the bakery owner and the landlord, its patrons began to ponder a future without their special place. They share deep sadness, bitterness, and dark humor as they react to the store’s imminent closure. The mood of this page reflects anticipation of their expectant loss and hints at their growing recognition of what they will lose and how important this “third place” had become to them, allowing them to connect with neighbors and avoid social isolation in retirement.
As I nervously applied this test, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the page captures the stakes of crisis they confronted and their deep attachments to place and to each other. I also found myself on page 99, as a chronicler of their story and a participant observer. Here, I reflect on my own attachments to them and their place, “Their kindness also stirred a twinge of anticipated loss for me as their parting words for the evening reminded me of how they had pulled me into their web of care. I also felt unease, on the precipice of a changing world that had in some ways become my own.”
What’s missing from page 99 is an explicit mention of people’s advanced ages and how their circumstances in old age heightened the significance of neighborhood places to them, as they spent more time closer to home due to financial limitations, surplus time in retirement, and health and mobility issues that constrained traveling far from their residences. But this page capably sets the stage for their unfolding journey—one that I hope readers will join—as they reconfigure long-held routines around new places and people, while also working together to preserve the vital bonds they forged in their lost home away from home.
--Marshal Zeringue
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