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Do Black Patent Leather Shoes Really Reflect Up? is John Powers' classic comic novel of the 1960s Catholic subculture. The book stars Eddie Ryan, a Chicago boy who learns about the important questions of life in his years at an all-boys Catholic school on Chicago’s South Side. Ryan views life through the prism of his Catholic mentality—at times this clarifies life, at times it complicates it, but it always makes life interesting.
This new edition of Do Black Patent Leather Shoes Really Reflect Up? includes a new introduction as well as discussion questions designed to help deepen the reading experience for both individuals and reading groups.
A guide for deeper individual understanding of the novel or for group discussion [pdf]
John R. Powers was born in 1945 on the South Side of Chicago. He earned a BA in sociology from Loyola University Chicago and an MA and a PhD in communications from Northwestern University. He wrote his doctoral dissertation on Studs Terkel, a Chicago radio personality and writer known for his oral histories (Hard Times, The Good War). Powers was a professor of speech and performing arts at Northeastern Illinois University for six years. He also created and hosted a number of specials for Chicago public television during this time. Powers’s writing career began at the age of sixteen, when the Chicago Tribune published a column he penned. Years later, he started writing about growing up Catholic during the 1950s and 1960s, because, he says, no one else had. “You write what you know about,” he says. “No one had ever written a book about the culture of growing up Catholic. I wanted to write a humorous social portrait of Catholicism in the mid-twentieth century.” Powers’s stories first appeared in the form of articles written for Chicago magazine. The novels followed in quick succession: The Last Catholic in America (1973), Do Black Patent Leather Shoes Really Reflect Up? (1975), and The Unoriginal Sinner and the Ice-Cream God (1977). He has written one other novel, The Junk-Drawer Corner-Store Front-Porch Blues (1992), as well as Odditude: Finding the Passion for Who You Are and What You Do (2007). Powers’s “fictionalized memoirs” of growing up Catholic have found life beyond the printed page. In 1979, a musical production of Do Black Patent Leather Shoes Really Reflect Up? opened in Chicago and ran there for three years. Powers produced the Chicago show full-time, as well as other productions of the play in other major cities. Powers has also produced and starred in a one-man show called Life’s Not Fair . . . So What? John Powers and his wife, JaNelle, have two daughters, Jacey and Joy. He lives in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, and is a motivational speaker. He speaks to about ninety companies, professional organizations, and community groups a year.
The Last Catholic in America: An affectionate, humorous portrayal of a bygone Catholic world.
The Unoriginal Sinner and the Ice-Cream God: This concluding novel in John Power's memorable trilogy is the poignant tale of an ambitious and gifted young man who struggles with God, career, an family. Will he ever find happiness?