Building Life

Building Life is the second volume of an unconventional memoir from the highly original writer, Sylvia Baer. Through essays and photographs-many of which have been shared worldwide on social media-Baer tells the stories of five generations of her remarkable family, as well as stories of their neighbors in the buildings and communities she grew up in.  

With great grandparents who lived under pogroms in Eastern Europe; grandparents who escaped the Holocaust to Uruguay, where she was born; a grandfather who was a celebrated engineer and German immigrant to the United States in the 1920s; parents from diverse cultures and languages; her own United States immigrant experiences in the late 1950s; and stories of the many people who helped, guided, and influenced her during her childhood, Baer tells her own family's story, an American story, and a universal human story. Vivid family photographs illuminate Baer's lovely, compelling essays. 

This second volume also includes powerful vignettes of Baer's students-just a few of the thousands of students she has taught (and learned from) over the course of her fifty-year career.