Synopsis
High Rise Stories: Voices from Chicago Public Housing, edited by Audrey Petty, is a compelling collection of oral histories that gives voice to former residents of Chicago’s now-demolished public housing projects, such as Cabrini-Green, Robert Taylor Homes, Stateway Gardens, and Rockwell Gardens. Published as part of the Voice of Witness series, the book captures the lived experiences of twelve individuals through first-person narratives, offering an intimate and nuanced perspective on life in these iconic high-rise communities. Petty, a Chicago native and associate professor of English at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, compiles these stories to illuminate the complex interplay of community, displacement, and poverty in the wake of gentrification and the Chicago Housing Authority’s (CHA) Plan for Transformation, which led to the demolition of these high-rises starting in the early 2000s. The book challenges the monolithic stereotypes of public housing as merely sites of violence and despair, revealing instead the vibrant, resilient communities that existed within them, while also acknowledging the systemic neglect and structural challenges residents faced.
The narratives, drawn from over one hundred hours of interviews with twenty-six former residents, are carefully edited to provide a novelistic depth, tracing each narrator’s life from childhood to the present. The stories reflect a range of experiences, from the joys of tight-knit communities to the hardships of living in underfunded, mismanaged buildings plagued by violence, broken elevators, and inadequate services. For example, Dolores, an 82-year-old former resident of Cabrini-Green, recounts her 53 years in the complex, highlighting her leadership in resident government and her husband’s efforts to mentor youth through a Drum and Bugle Corps, while also describing the pain of her hasty displacement. Sabrina shares the harrowing story of her sister being shot in their apartment during a turf war, compounded by the refusal of ambulances to enter Cabrini-Green, forcing her family to carry her sister down thirteen flights of stairs. Eddie Leman, who grew up in Robert Taylor Homes with a drug-addicted mother, speaks of the stress of navigating dangerous environments and how his experiences shaped his career in mental health after serving in the Marines. These accounts, among others, underscore the resilience of residents who built meaningful lives despite systemic abandonment, while also exposing the human cost of policies like redlining, segregation, and the CHA’s redevelopment plans.
Petty’s introduction provides critical context, situating the narratives within the broader history of Chicago’s public housing, from its origins during the Great Migration to its chronic defunding from the 1970s onward. She reflects on her own upbringing on Chicago’s South Side, near the Robert Taylor Homes, and her initial perceptions of the high-rises as distant, almost mythic places. The book also includes contributions from scholars like D. Bradford Hunt and journalist Ben Austen, whose appendices offer historical and architectural insights into the rise and fall of these projects. Praised by figures like Van Jones and Alex Kotlowitz, High Rise Stories is celebrated for its empathetic and educational approach, serving as both a vital act of historical recovery and a call to rethink urban policy and housing reform. By centering the voices of those who lived in these spaces, the book reveals the paradoxes of public housing—places marked by both profound community and unimaginable hardship—and asserts that the residents themselves, not the buildings, are the true landmarks of Chicago’s history.