WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD

Patti Smith's iconic book, in which she recounts her relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe: a tribute to friendship whose pages, full of vitality and humor, give us back the flavor of a New York where almost anything was possible.

It was the summer Coltrane died. [ ] The hippies raised their empty arms and China detonated the hydrogen bomb. Jimi Hendrix set fire to his guitar in Monterey. [...] It was the summer of love. And in that inhospitable, shifting climate, one chance encounter changed the course of my life. It was the summer I met Robert Mapplethorpe.

Synopsis

It happened in July 1967, when they were just children, but from then on, Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe forged a friendship that would only end with the great photographer's death in 1989. This is what this splendid memoir, winner of the National Book Award, tells of the shared life of two artists, both enthusiastic and passionate, who made great strides across the outskirts of New York to reach the nerve center of the new art world. That's how they ended up settling into the Chelsea Hotel and became the protagonists of a now-vanished world where Allen Ginsberg, Andy Warhol, and their boys reigned, and the great bands that defined the final years of the 20th century were created, while AIDS wreaked havoc.

Far from being a sad and nostalgic book, We Were Children is a tribute to unfettered friendship, and its pages, full of vitality and humor, give us back the flavor of that great city where there was a time when almost anything was possible.