| | | | All The Way Broken Author: David Isay
Format: Audio Download
Audio Length: 28 min.
Rating: Not rated
Retail Price: $15.99
Price: $10.95
You save $5.04 (31%) 
Publisher's Summary: All the Way Broken is the story of Iolene Catalano, a former heroin addict and prostitute diagnosed with AIDS. A few months before her death, Catalano met David Isay, and agreed to share her life story on tape. Catalano was born in 1948, in a carnival trailer somewhere in Pennsylvania. Her mother was an exotic dancer, and her father ran a crooked carnival concession. Catalano spent her childhood in orphanages, reform schools, and mental institutions. By the age of 20, she was living on the streets of New York City as a heroin addict, prostitute, thief, and some-time rock and roll singer. She was diagnosed with the HIV virus just one month after she shot heroin for the last time. Catalano and Isay recorded more than 30 hours of interviews together. In April 1994, Catalano had a collapse and was admitted to Roosevelt Hospital in New York. They suspended the project, hoping she would recover enough to pick up with the recording. While the pain made it too difficult for Catalano to focus on her story, she insisted on keeping a tape recorder by her bedside to try to keep an audio journal. At night, she'd have a nurse tape a microphone to her chest so that she could record her thoughts as she was falling asleep. Iolene Catalano died at Roosevelt Hospital on June 3, 1994. Isay and Catalano got as far as age 14 in her story. She was clean for the last 8 years of her life. |
