Unbeknownst to most of the city's inhabitants, a rural community of garbage workers once existed on a now-vanished island in New York City.
Barren Island was a swampy speck in Jamaica Bay where a motley group of new immigrants and Afri
Miriam Sicherman is a public elementary school teacher in New York City. She is a graduate of Oberlin College, Bank Street College of Education and Brooklyn College and lives in Brooklyn with her daughter.