Fire Escapes: A Fictional Memoir

Gloria Rojas was born in New York City in 1939. She grew up in The Bronx and spent nine years as an elementary and junior high school teacher before accepting an opportunity to work as an ESL (English as a Second Language) instructor on the city’s Channel 13. Spending time in the television studio gave her an opportunity to watch the taping of the “The World at 10” news show, an experience that led her to pursue a career in broadcast journalism.After completing the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, Gloria started at NYC’s Channel 2 News as the city’s first Latina broadcast journalist. In the course of her career she spent time at ABC, NBC and CBS news, and distinguished herself as an excellent street reporter. In her spare time, she amused herself by writing down some of her unique experiences along her life’s journey, many of which appear in this book.Fire Escapes is titled “A Fictional Memoir” for good reason. Seeing her own life in youth as being fairly conventional, in Fire Escapes she re-invents herself as “Justine Trinidad,” whose mother died in childbirth and was raised in poverty by a spiteful grandmother. In this book Justine looks back on her troubled, motherless youth while working in a newsroom as a broadcast reporter. Rojas brings it all together as an interesting blend of an imagined life and vignettes culled from real events.From the book jacket:“Simpson Street,my street, lined withbrick and brownstonetenements, wasdecorated with old ladiessitting at the limestonestoops and permanentlydraped with gracefulfire escapes and stairsthat climbed up thefour-story facades.The fire escapes werethe verandas, porches, balconies, and decks of thestreet’s society, a place to gossip, read, grow flowers,and watch the movement of life below.”Justine Trinidad was born into typicalworking class poverty in New York City’s Bronxneighborhood in the late 1950s. She was orphanedin childbirth, and raised by a bitter grandmotherwho blamed the child for the death of her daughter.As a grown woman Justine pur