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Brent Staples Describes Growing Up In "Parallel Time."

Doctor of Psychology and editorial writer for the New York Times, Brent Staples. His new memoir is "Parallel Time: Growing Up in Black & White" (Pantheon). In 1984, Staples' younger brother, a cocaine dealer, was murdered. Staples began a process of reconsideration of the major questions in his life: his distance from his family by graduate study at the University of Chicago; the demise and racial divisions of his industrial hometown in Pennsylvania. On missing his brother's memorial, Staples writes "Choose carefully the funerals you miss."

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Other segments from the episode on February 23, 1994

Fresh Air with Terry Gross, February 23, 1994: Interview with Brent Staples; Review of Leon Fleisher's album "Piano Works for the Left Hand."

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