The Crazy Bunch

Penguin Poets

From a prize-winning poet, a new collection that chronicles a weekend in the life of a group of friends coming of age in East Harlem at the dawn of the hip-hop era

Willie Perdomo, a native of East Harlem, has won praise as a hip, playful, historically engaged poet whose restlessly lyrical language mixes "city life with a sense of the transcendent" (NPR.org). In his fourth collection, The Crazy Bunch, Perdomo returns to his beloved neighborhood to create a vivid, kaleidoscopic portrait of a "crew" coming of age in East Harlem at the beginning of the 1990s. In poems written in couplets, vignettes, sketches, riffs, and dialogue, Perdomo recreates a weekend where surviving members of the crew recall a series of tragic events: "That was the summer we all tried to fly. All but one of us succeeded."

©2019 Willie Perdomo (P)2025 Recorded Books

Storytelling at its finest. Relatable and funky. Fast paced and engaging. I could see them all.

Willie’s voice is so important to the poetry. It’s wonderful to be able to hear the voice of The Crazy Bunch as channeled through one of their own.

Fact !!!

I love the fact that everything said was 100% official. Automatic memories and goosebumps.