The World I Know: The Diary of a Southwest Philly Girl

The year is 1985: Ronald Reagan is president, big hair is all the rage, and Madonna is burning up the pop charts. In the Elmwood section of Southwest Philadelphia, Catholic schoolgirl Janet Kramer keeps a diary. Through her words, she paints vignettes of her life in this isolated corner of the city, a life centered around her close-knit, blue-collar family; her loyal friends; her high school; and her true love, the son of an Elmwood mobster.
Beyond her family's row home on Reedland Street, Janet's world is hardly idyllic: a mall shooting breaks out in the Philadelphia suburbs, racial tensions boil over into Elmwood's streets, a space shuttle explodes, a mob war erupts in Elmwood, and a Soviet nuclear reactor melts down. Janet documents it all in her diary as her life moves against a backdrop of a new era in Elmwood and in the world. No matter what changes it brings, her heart and soul will forever remain in 1980s Elmwood.
In a world that is gone.