The Joyful Tale of Honky: A Memoir by Dalton Conley

What childhood story does the Honky excerpt describe?

Is it about:

• A playground fight with a friend
• Moving from one neighborhood to another
• His parents' divorce
• Kidnapping a baby

The story from the author's childhood does the Honky describe in the excerpt?

The story from the author's childhood that the Honky describes in the excerpt is kidnapping a baby.

Dalton Conley is an American sociologist, a professor at Princeton University and author of eight books, including a memoir and a sociology textbook. Honky is Dalton Conley's memoir, an autobiographical account of him growing up in a majority Black and Puerto Rican neighborhood in a federal housing project in the Lower East Side, Manhattan in the city of New York as a member of the minority.

At three years old, he was so desperate for a sister that he decided to kidnap a black baby from the housing complex’s playground, who was quickly returned by his mother.

The excerpt from Honky reads, "And there was no one who told more stories to me than my mother, Ellen. One of her favorites was how I had wanted a baby sister so badly that I kidnapped a black child in the playground of the housing complex. She told this story each time my real sister, Alexandra, and I were standing, arms crossed, facing away from each other after some squabble or fistfight. The moral of the story for my mother was that I should love my sister, since I had wanted to have her so desperately. The message I took away, however, was one of race."