The R-FH Area Weekend: Author Chat with RFH Alum Chef Rossi

The weekend promises to be a nice one, as far as good weather goes. Ahhhhh …

So, the cruisin’ kind of weather may prompt Rumson-Fair Haven area folks to venture to Asbury Park on Sunday for a little book talk featuring Rumson-raised RFH grad Chef Rossi at Asbury Book Cooperative (ABC) on Cookman Avenue.

On Sunday ….

The shindig starts at 5 p.m. and is booked as a conversational presentation featuring Rossi, of course, in conversation with ABC Board President Allyson Crystal about Rossi’s memoir, The Punk Rock Queen of the Jews.

Get your tickets by clicking here or try doing the walk-in thing, but space is limited.

About the book, from ABC …

Officially designated a “rebel” by The New York Times and “the wildest thing this side of the mason Dixon line” by Zagat, Rossi has released “The Punk Rock Queen of the Jews” (She Writes Press), her outrageous, queer coming-of-age story. Rossi was taught only to aspire to marry a nice Jewish boy and to be a good kosher Jewish girl.

At 16 she flowers into a rebellious punk-rock rule-breaker who runs away to seek adventure. Her freedom is cut short when her parents kidnap her and dump her with a Chasidic rabbi — a “cult buster” known for “reforming” wayward Jewish girls — in Crown Heights, Brooklyn.

Rossi spends the next couple of years in a repressive, misogynistic culture straight out of the nineteenth century, forced to trade in her pink hair and Sex Pistols T shirt for maxi skirts and long-sleeved blouses and endure not only bone crushing boredom but also outright abuse and violence. The Punk Rock Queen of the Jews is filled with wonderfully rich characters, hilarious dialogue, and keen portraits of the secretive hothouse Orthodox world and the struggling New York City of the 1980s: dirty, on the edge, but fully vital and embracing.