Amazing Grace
In this book report I will give you a summary of the book. I will try to explain the importance of this book in terms of getting America to recognize the overwhelming problem in raising a child in this environment. Can you imagine there being no difference between the filth on the streets and the filth in your home, both being equally as bad as the other. Crime, and the sex industry are so rampant it goes almost unnoticed by the residents. Crime and drug dealing are common place and basically part of the culture. This is Mott Haven, in New York City's South Bronx. In Amazing Grace Kozol explores the lives of children living in Americas' ghettos. He talks to many children about their life experiences and their future. The stories are told in the reality of the children that have lived them. Children that don't know what it is to be a child, children that have seen their parents shot, die of aids , be arrested, as well as seeing their parents dealing and doing drugs. What seems to bother me most about thinking about these situations is the fact that most people don't even want to let on that these situations exist at all; most people feel that they can't be bothered. A handful of children who have--through the love an
The people of Mott-Haven have one thing in common though the fact that things in Mott Haven are not likely to improve much in the years to come. The murder of an entire generation is taking place and we as the strangers on the street are pretending it isn't going on right in front of us. The book does not romanticize or soften the effects of violence and sickness. September 11th has brought about a new way of dealing with violence that is happening right in front of us, no longer do I believe that America will duck and cover in the face of danger, America will not run and therefore we should also not run in the face of our fellow man being persecuted and put down. As a country, America doesn't seem to understand that everyone has something to offer everyone can learn something from everyone else and that no one is indispensable. Several children die during the year that this narrative takes place. Kozol tries to determine how other Americans not living in such poverty allow their fellow Americans to tolerate, misery and death for those living a few subway stops north of glitzy midtown Manhattan. They talk about death and aids and drugs and gang wars that rage throughout Mott-Haven and the rest of the Burroughs in the South Bronx and greater Bronx area. Overall I enjoyed this book I found it both disturbing and fascinating reading about the struggles of how these children had to live on a day to day basis however I also found it fascinating that even some of them made it out of poverty and made something of themselves. The odds seem so against them that for them to make it out of the ghetto requires major focus and discipline. If that focus and discipline was used for education and learning instead of just trying to survive so much more could have been accomplished by those individuals. There wasn't much talk of how much of the situation was created by the people in the story, although you would still have to feel badly for the children. I say that there will never ever again be a conventional hijacking on an airplane because the passengers are no longer guaranteed the freedom of living if they cooperate. I found it so amazing that the rest of society turns its head to this problem.
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Acceptance Essays
