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I angled around in my seat to show him the cover. “It’s called High Rise Stories, it’s about the Chicago projects.” He said he’d been reading over my shoulder and seen the words “Cabrini-Green” on the page, and that that was where he grew up. I started to tell him more about the book, about how the interviewers spent two years finding people who had lived in CHA housing at different points in the 20th century. His eyes kept getting bigger. “This book is about the projects? About the projects? It’s just about the projects?”
I told him there were going to be events for the book around the city, in Oak Park, at 826CHI, at Hull House, and that he should try to go and meet the editor. He seemed skeptical, but he was adamant that he’d get the book. “I gotta show everyone,” he said, “you know?” It struck me that as I’d been sitting on the train, reading about people who lived in CHA housing, I was literally surrounded by those people. It had taken someone else’s multiyear research project, turned into a book, and sent to me by the publisher, for me to turn and talk to one of them.
