SOURCE: "Walks on the Southwest Side," in Washington Post Book World, January 13, 1980, pp. 1-2.

In the following review, Cook praises Dybek's Childhood and Other Neighborhoods and discusses how Dybek fits into the tradition of Chicago writers.

Along a diagonal line southwest from Chicago's Loop lies a vast terra incognita once populated almost completely by Slavic groups which has been changing over to black and Latin during the past couple of decades. Chicago has had neighborhood laureates in the past—James T. Farrell, who wrote of the south-side Irish; Gwendolyn Brooks, the fine poet who sings of the black south side; Nelson Algren, whose people are the Poles of the near-northwest side; and Saul Bellow, who has written so well about the west-side Jews. But nobody has come forward to speak for that mixed patch surrounding Douglas Park on the southwest side. That is, nobody until now. For here...