Perhaps because I have visited the homes of "welfare moms"; or maybe because I have journeyed to juvenile court with poor youth and listened to over-worked judges, lawyers, and police officers; possibly because I have pulled my own children away from windows and walls when bullets were flying--for whatever reason, I couldn't stop reading Alex Kotlowitz's book, There Are No Children Here. "Amen" and "yes sir" were my verbal responses while tears of anger and frustration, love and joy reflected my emotional responses to this book.
There Are No Children Here addresses the subject of urban poverty; Kotlowitz introduces its effects by way of the lives of a family caught in that poverty. Through the eyes of Lafeyette and Pharaoh Rivers and their mom LaJoe, Kotlowitz shares the dreams, fears, and realities of a family in the Henry Horner Projects of Chicago. The urban family experience not only includes the needs of getting food, clothing, education, and shelter, but also the need to avoid as much as possible the gang violence, poverty, poor housing, and crime that plague the city.
Without excessive statistical, social, or political analyses, Kotlowitz holds up a mirror to the complexity of being a victim of our society. His review of the effects of economic, racial, and sexual oppression details the realities of life for African-American families living in our cities' ghettos; it paints a picture of life lived in hope without any resources or reserves.
The amount of time, energy, and personal and financial resources it takes to survive in the Henry Horner Projects is graphically demonstrated. The household expands as older children and relatives move in with their children and their belongings. Evictions, drugs, and fear drive them back home, and LaJoe takes them in. The Aid to Families with Dependent Children payment is cut off because of a rule broken in a way that no one understands. The plumbing does not work, and those who are responsible don't have the resources to do anything about it.
Immersed in this picture of survival, it would be difficult to charge this family with being "welfare cheats" or admonish them to get out. How does one gather the resources to "escape" poverty when there is barely enough to survive?
Read There Are No Children Here before you think you understand "the problem." When the educational system fails to provide an education, and the economic system fails to provide a job, and the judicial system treats you differently because of the color of your skin and your place of residence, the gang alternative makes more sense. Gangs provide protection, financial help, and meaning in life. Before offering a solution to the gang, drug, or violence problems in America's cities, read There Are No Children Here.
Ultimately, the grace in this book is found in Kotlowitz's entanglement in the web created by the lives of those he would study. Kotlowitz draws the reader into the entanglement. And there in the stickiness of the web we learn that as long as we allow, plan, or even tolerate the Henry Horner projects of Chicago, or the police brutality in Los Angeles, or racial oppression anywhere there will be no other response but to say there are no children in the places or faces of oppression.
Susan Ruehle was on the pastoral team of Reformation Lutheran Church in inner-city Milwaukee and was an anti-racism trainer when this review appeared.
There Are No Children Here: The Story of Two Boys Growing Up in the Other America. By Alex Kotlowitz. Anchor Books, 1991.
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