Amazing Grace: Lives of Children
and the Conscience of a Nation, The
by Jonathan Kozol
A Compelling Eye-Opener
The children in this book defy the stereotypes of urban youth too frequently
presented by the media. Tender, generous and often religiously devout,
they speak with eloquence and honesty about the poverty and racial
isolation that have wounded but not hardened them. The book does not
romanticize or soften the effects of violence and sickness. One fourth of
the child-bearing women in the neighborhoods where these children live
test positive for HIV. Pediatric AIDs, life-consuming fires and gang rivalries
take a high toll. Several children die during the year in which this narrative
takes place. A gently written work, Amazing Grace asks questions that
are at once political and theological. What is the value of a childs life?
What exactly do we plan to do with those whom we appear to have defined
as economically and humanly superfluous? How cold -- how cruel, how
tough -- do we dare be?

Personal Review: Amazing Grace: Lives of Children and the
Conscience of a Nation, The by Jonathan Kozol
It is a book about children. Children who live in Mott Haven, one of the
poorest neighbourhoods in the South Bronx. I have almost never read
anything that has moved me and at the same time disturbed me as this
book has. Jonathan Kozol has with great care and sensitivity interviewed
children living in this place that's both crime ridden and run down. Most of
these kids start off as being trusting and innocent but grow into becoming
more and more disillusioned about their surroundings and hope for
survival. The HIV and AIDS virus has really hit hard in these places and
this is connected to the large amount of the population that abuse heroin.
The heroin has such self-mocking names as "Jungle Fever", "Black
Sabbath", "DOA"(dead on arrival), and "True Power". Many of the children
are born to addicted mothers, some of who are in jail, already contracting
the disease in utero. First time mothers have an average age between 16
and 17, while grandmothers can be in their late thirties and great great
grandmothers in their late 50s.
Its incredible how close Jonathan Kozol manages to come to these kids.
They really take him in and open up their hearts. They share with him their
stories. These stories are full of horrible and painful things that are so far
from the realities that we experience here in modern day big city
Stockholm. The segregation in these South Bronx neighborhoods is total,
whether it's the schools, hospitals, or prisons. And almost always the kids
receive the short end of the stick. Children tell of how they see murders on
the street, get attacked by rats, how some are killed or burned from
household fires, how some eat cold oatmeal out of the box for dinner,
many of the kids live with chronic asthma due to anxiety, others live with
mothers dying of AIDS, and often have classrooms that are decrepit and
completely rundown. There are less qualified doctors and teachers here
than anywhere else in the state of New York. There have been major tax
cuts in the city that have hit these citizens hardest. Like cuts in sanitation
that has resulted in mountains of garbage lining up inside buildings
drawing hordes of rats. Cuts in maintenance of buildings that leave
elevators broken, often resulting in playing kids falling down the elevator
shafts and dying. The police refer to some of the housing projects to as
"death camps" because so many drug dealers and addicts dominate them.
The tax cuts have also led to many social workers losing their jobs as well
as closing of several youth centers that allow kids safe places to be while
their parents work. Prostitution is also common among the women. Mostly
serving the truck drivers who drive through the neighborhood to deliver
goods to the Hunts Point market that is close. They turn tricks for 3 to 5
dollars that go to feeding their addictions. This happens all hours of the
day and night, even when the children can see. Many times when the
children or adults are asked how they manage to survive they mention
their faith in god and heaven. That the place that they are in now is more
reminiscent of hell, but this is not where they will end up.

As a atudent of theology I cannot help but see this book as a strong wake
up call. The gospels of the New Testament took the part of the poor,
saying the last shall be first and the first shall be last. In the Christian
nation of America that prints "In god we trust" on their coins-this is how
they treat the poor. One priest who works in the South Bronx took a little
kid with him when he had to drive to Queens to do some errands. There he
took him to Burger King to eat. The kid had never been outside of the
Bronx before. The priest later learned from the kid's teacher that he wrote
an essay in school about their lunch called "My trip to Burger King"-the
same way a rich kid might write about a trip he made to Florida. Most of
these kids never get any Christmas or birthday presents. They don't even
have their own rooms. Sleeping on sofas or on mattresses on the floor.
One child says, " it feels like I'm hidden", and this is a good observation.
Nobody wants to be reminded of what these children are going through.
Therefore their stories are seldom, if ever, heard. This is why Jonathan
Kozols book is so important. Only a short distance away just across 96th
street lies the park avenue apartments that houses some of the wealthiest
people in the nation, households with an average income of 300,000
dollars a year. Toward the end of the book the author talks to an old poet
living in the Bronx and the start to discuss the Nazi holocaust and the
concentration camps. How there are certain disturbing parallels to what
happened then and whats happening now. How the outcasts and those
human beings viewed as being "superfluous" are quarantined. "Its not the
same" he says, "but there are some similarities. There is the feeling of
eclipse. There is the likelihood of death for many. There is a sense of
people watching from the outside but seeming paralyzed and doing
nothing. And then there are the miracles."
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