Rivkah Lapidus is a multi-degreed psychotherapist, harm reduction advocate, painter, writer, collagist, and occasional poet who lives in Somerville, Massachusetts. But the grandmother is also a Queens girl through and through (or true and true).
She’ll discuss her memoir, The Middle: Growing Up in Flushing, at the Queens Historical Society on Sunday, April 14, at 2:30 pm.
General admission is $5.
Sometimes humorous, sometimes poignant, this book describes an upbringing in a world that hardly exists now. A second-generation Jew, Lapidus strived to assimilate into greater society amid Mid Century sensibility and patriotism. She was part of a large Jewish exodus from Flushing that started in the 1970s, and the neighborhood slowly became a vibrant, sprawling Chinatown and Pan-Asian hub. (Her alma mater, Campbell JHS 218 on Main Street, shuttered in 1982.)
“Writing about those years evoked memories and connected me with many friends, old and new,” she stated to QHS. “I became aware that I am writing a cultural history of the mid-20th century from a child’s point of view.”
QHS is located inside Kingsland Homestead, a historic landmark at 143-35 37th Ave. in Flushing. The two-story Long Island half house (wide side hall with double parlors off to one side) dates to around 1785. It has a gambrel roof, a crescent-shaped window in a side gable, a Federal-period chimney piece with an iron Franklin stove, and a Dutch-style, two-level front door.
In addition to the lecture, tours will be available on April 14. (Be sure to ask about the Weeping Beech in the backyard.)
Images: QHS/Rivkah Lapidus