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Amazing Grace: Lives of Children and the Conscience of a Nation, The | 
 enlarge | Author: Jonathan Kozol
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Category: Book
List Price: $14.95
Buy Used: $3.00
You Save: $11.95 (80%)
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Rating:  68 reviews
Sales Rank: 6247
Media: Paperback
Pages: 304
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 8 x 5.3 x 0.8
ISBN: 0060976977
Dewey Decimal Number: 362.7097471
EAN: 9780060976972
Publication Date: November 6, 1996
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Product Description
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 child's 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?
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| Customer Reviews: Read 63 more reviews...
 Amazing Grace December 7, 2008
Linda Evans (Columbia, MO USA)
In Amazing Grace, Jonathan Kozol shares intimate conversations with the people of Mott Haven, a poverty stricken ghetto neighborhood in New York. They talk of
* hospital waste incinerator that burns body parts in the neighborhood
* a friend that died from AIDS; "she never was sick enough for SSI"
* children recalled being robbed in middle of night; her grandmother came, but not the police.
* Home with no running water; they had to carry water in buckets to the 7th floor from the bar and grill across the street.
* rats eat through walls and phone lines.
* a child died by leaning on a broken elevator door and fell through the shaft; city blamed the family for letting an 8 year old into the hallway.
Mott Haven residents did not hold Mayor Giuliani in high regard. He proposed funding cuts that would negatively impact their already desperate living conditions. TIMES reported that people wondered about cutting service to the cities poorest and cutting taxes, which helps the cities richest.
Kozol describes living conditions that we would never believe exist in our great nation, quotes from children with incredible insight for their young age. Kozol documents statistics that are shocking to those with a conscience. Kozol wrote that some believe if the bad could be `weeded' out, the remaining people could live normal lives; Kozol shared his opinion that another lower level criminal would rise to the top; another drug dealer or pimp or killer would take the place of the one removed.
Kozol describes "Compassion fatigue": people tired from reading the sad stories and nothing gets better. This is true; issues in Amazing Grace are overwhelming. We can educate our policymakers regarding the platforms that are important to us.
Mr. Kozol, has positive change occurred since this book published? Did you send a copy to Rudy Giuliani so that he will know what the residents think of him?
Rates a 5 of 5 for raising awareness of realities of poverty. For all Americans; we then look to our hearts for our role in change.
A compelling eye-opener September 10, 2007
M. Gibson (grand junction, co)
Kozol's Amazing Grace is a true eye-opener. After reading it, I feel that I had nothing close to an accurate image of the conditions of poverty that people still live in in some of the inner city neighborhoods. The reality Kozol awakens us to shatters the illusion America holds of "equal opportunity for all," and the book is an indictment of a far-too-unaware society run by politicians who must think about quick fixes (prisons, tax cuts) that try to please voters or address problem symptoms rather than causes (terrible schools, decrepit surroundings, congestion of the homeless, and the not-always subtle discrimination that continues in society). A truly important book, which will challenge any readers who are supportive of Rudy Giuliani to defend his startling insensitivity to the issue, displayed by his cutting of funding of public services that are so crucial to many people Kozol writes of.
Out of Sight, Out of Mind August 20, 2007
R. Chaffey (Chicago)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Jonathan Kozol has dedicated his work on bringing light to the inequalities that exist within our nation. These inequalities are best seen, unfortunately but not unexpectedly, along racial lines. "Amazing Grace: The Lives of Children and the Conscience of a Nation" is a book with a lot of questions, a lot of shocking information, but not a lot of answers; if only because the answers may not exist. It is a stunning look at the deep disparity between rich and poor within our nation.
Kozol focuses on the South Bronx ghetto of Mott Haven, the poorest borough in New York, clearly segregated from the middle and upper classes, where two-thirds of the population are Hispanic and one-third African-American. Through interviews with school children, teachers, ministers, and community members, Kozol paints a bleak picture of the equally bleak lives led by those who live in this area. He recounts stories of buildings where wires have been eaten through by rats that are the size of squirrels, of drugs being bought and sold openly on the streets (although the drug dealers have enough respect to break when school lets out), and of families too numerous to count who are being killed off one by one by AIDS. The way these children see the world is frightenly dead-on; they know when they're not wanted because it's proven to them everyday in the way they have to live.
"Amazing Grace" is not an easy read due to its topic matter. Kozol's style is matter-of-fact, made up of usually uninterrupted comments by those he's interviewed, sometimes with his questions thrown in, and his own comments and hypotheses as to how this can go on. But Kozol doesn't necessarily have answers or even blame. Surely, some blame has to go to a system that keeps the poorest people with the least chance for success segregated from others, a separation of the haves and have nots to the greatest degree. And certainly others would place the blame on the poor people themselves. Perhaps it's a combination of a lot of factors, not one or the other, but what is certain is that too little is being done (or maybe can be done) to make a difference before it is too late.
An important book June 25, 2007
Macke (Sweden)
1 out of 3 found this review helpful
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."
Amazing Grace: Lives of Children and the Conscience of a Nation, The May 7, 2007
J. Soto
0 out of 3 found this review helpful
I ordered a series of books for my daughter. Excellent email response, timely receipt and accurate updates of the order. More than what I expected. The materials were in good condition on arrival. Very satisfied with the service.
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