A Discussion Guide is in development to address the controversial issues in Patricia Vaccarino’s Yonkers Trilogy. Titled Yonkers Beats, this Discussion Guide is intended for use by teachers, book clubs—or anyone who wants—to examine controversial topics that engender difficult conversations.
Although the Yonkers Trilogy covers the time period from 1969 to 1973, the issues prevalent then are the same issues that we grapple with today. Ms. Vaccarino’s coming-of-age novels take us on a dark journey encountering racism, sexual harassment, abortion, homophobia, mental illness, organized crime, violence, death, lost love and lost friendship among the working class and poor.
Published by small imprint Modus Operandi Books, So Not Yonkers was not sent to literary agents or publishers for consideration. Author Patricia Vaccarino said, “My stories about the working class do not fit the agenda of either the conservative alt-right or the liberal ‘woke.’”
So Not Yonkers won a 2023 Firebird Book Award for Literary Fiction.
So Not Yonkers, the third book in the Yonkers Trilogy, published earlier this week on May 1, 2023, is a crossover to both Young Adult and Adult historical literary fiction. The two prior books in the Yonkers trilogy are The Heart of Yonkers (2020) and YONKERS Yonkers!: A Story of Race and Redemption (2018).
Although many characters return in this third book, So Not Yonkers has been written as a standalone work of historical literary fiction.
Ms. Vaccarino has also written a monograph about the circumstances that led to the razing of the Yonkers Carnegie Library in 1982. The Death of a Library: An American Tragedy is available in softcover, hardcover and as an eBook.