Sonk’s #CBR Review #8: Scraping by in the Big Eighties by Natalia Rachel Singer
More of a series of essays than a cohesive memoir, Scraping By in the Big Eighties is the story of Singer’s twenties, the vague, undefinable years between college and career. After graduating from Northwestern, she packed her bags and headed West, as much to escape her mother’s mental illness as to reject the future so many of her former classmates were embracing, one of stability, security and selling out. The book follows her from the Pacific Northwest to Mexico to Massachusetts to Paris as she discovers herself, deals with the demons of her mother’s illness, and resists the establishment, Reaganomics, and the excess of the 80′s. There’s plenty of sex and drugs and rock ‘n roll, but there’s also a lot of interesting social commentary on a decade that’s most often glorified or forgotten. I didn’t know much about the 80′s beyond what one sees on VH1 and what my parents have told me, but Singer paints a complex portrait of a decade that’s far less ideal than nostalgia would have us believe. She is decidedly anti-Reagan, and describes him and his policies in ways I’d never really heard of before (and appreciated). The interplay of politics and personal experience really works here; all of her stories are framed, somehow, by the national situation and the policies of the lawmakers in power.
