New Book Places Author in the Company of Roth, Heard, and Baraka

Ellicott City, MD, July 21, 2019 --(PR.com)-- In the tradition of Newark authors, Phillip Roth, Nathen Heard, and Amiri Baraka; David Hugo Barrett tells his story of how a city helped to shape his development from a young boy entering kindergarten to a young adult leaving for college. The journey reveals the role that strong family, teachers, and peers have in placing a child on a positive developmental path. He draws the reader into his Clay Street world to experience the sights, sounds and smells of the city to witness and, perhaps even feel; his pain, disappointments and triumphs. The release is scheduled for August 9, 2019.

After being diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, author Barrett began work to complete the first installment of a planned trilogy. "A Newark Childhood: A Memoir" is an account of his growing up in Newark, New Jersey during the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. The home base of the story is Montclair, a suburb of Newark, and also 67 Clay Street in Newark’s north ward. Most of the characters in the early chapters are children who live in tenements at 33, 65 and 67 Clay Street. After he starts school; his world begins to expand to include new friends from the Baxter Terrace low-income housing project and the tiny row houses on the east and west sides of Burnet Street School. This book lays the foundation for the subsequent series installments that chronical work in the civil rights movement and his journey to leadership and the founding of a non-profit organization to prepare the next generation of Black males for greatness.

“Barrett’s account of growing up in Newark, New Jersey during the1940s, 1950s and 1960s are propelled by his compelling, precise observations of a city in flux and a family that sustained him. At turns, poignant, surprising, funny, and harrowing, this memoir reveals a boy’s emerging awareness of a city divided by race, class, and ethnicity, as he and his friends carve out moments of childhood solidarity and autonomy amid hostile territory. In compelling, streamlined prose, Barrett evokes the sights, sounds, and pulse of a Black urban teenager’s world. Yet, he also tells the story of parental devotion and its costs and maps the ties that bind an extended family, north and south, in the early years of the civil rights movement. I strongly endorse David Hugo Barrett’s 'A Newark Childhood: A Memoir.'”
- Dr. Julia Rabig, Assistant Professor of History, Dartmouth College.

"A Newark Childhood" will be available in bookstores, select retail outlets and online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble on or before August 9, 2019.

Media advisory to follow with book tour dates.

About: David Hugo Barrett spent his formative years growing up in Newark, New Jersey. He attended Newark’s public schools before earning his undergraduate degree in mathematics from Rutgers University and a Master’s degree in computer science from Howard University. During his 35-year career as an IT professional, he co-founded the Alpha Achievers program in 1997; an academic and leadership club that targets African American males in Howard County high schools, grades 9-12 who have a 3.0 or better grade point average. He started a second career teaching algebra and geometry in the high school program of the County’s alternative school. After twelve years of teaching, he retired in July 2018. He writes poems when they come to him.
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His community service, all in Howard County, includes former chairman and current director on the board of the Alpha Foundation of Howard County, Inc.; chairman and current director of the board of the Howard County Poetry and Literature Society, past president of the Howard County Library System, former director of the Horizon Foundation and past president of and current member of the Kappa Phi Lambda Chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha; in 2015 he received the Bloustein Award for community service from Rutgers and the Alpha Man of Merit from Alpha Phi Alpha. Finally, he was awarded the 2019 Wylene Burch Lifetime Achievement award by the NAACP.
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He has been married since 1976 to Saundra V. Barrett. He has one son with her and two sons from his previous marriage. Among the three sons, he has five grandchildren.