There Are No Children Here Essay
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The West side of Chicago, Harlem, Watts, and almost any major city in the U.S., What do all of these areas have in common? These areas, along with many others have become mine fields for the explosive issues of race, values, and community responsibility, led by the plight of the urban underclass. Issues such as violent crime, social separation, welfare dependence, drug wars, and unemployment all play a major role in the plight of American inner-city life. Alex Kotlowitz's book; “THERE ARE NO CHILDREN HERE”, confronts America's devastated urban life; a most painful issue in America.
Kotlowitz traces the lives of two black boys; 10-year-old Lafayette, and 7 year old Pharaoh, as they struggle to beat the odds growing up in one of Chicago's worst housing projects. Their family includes a welfare dependent mother, an alcoholic-drug using father, an older sister, an older brother, and younger triplets. Kotlowitz describes the horrors of an ill-maintained housing project completely taken over by gangs, where murders and shootings are an everyday thing. He succeeds at putting a face on the people trapped inside the housing projects with virtually no hope of escape. One can truly feel a sense of great loss for the family, and a great deal of hope for the two young boys. You can truly feel yourself hoping that things will work out for them, and you can really feel like you know these young men on a personal basis.
All through their lives Pharaoh and Lafayette are surrounded by violence and poverty. Their neighborhood had no banks, no public libraries no movie theatres, no skating rinks or bowling allies. Drug abuse was so rampant that the drug lords literally kept shop in an abandoned building in the projects, and shooting was everywhere. Also, there were no drug rehabilitation programs or centers to help combat the problem. Police feared going into the ghetto out of a fear for their own safety. The book follows Pharaoh and Lafayette over a two year period in which they struggle with school, attempt to resist the lure of gangs, mourn the death of close friends, and still find the courage to search for a quiet inner peace, that most people take for granted. Kotlowitz portrays what life is like at the bottom, and the little hope there is for the poor which makes it virtually impossible for the young lives in the ghetto to grow up. Also at the same time Kotlowitz wants the reader to know that not all hope is lost, but something must be done before hope is truly lost.
The mother was portrayed as a woman who lacked self-esteem, and was not prepared to enter the job market. She had no skills, and was completely dependant on welfare. She also liked to gamble, and sometimes actually won. The biggest and most pervasive problem of the young children's lives was the dominance of the gangs at Henry Horner Homes. The gangs were dedicated to violence, and children were compelled to join for their own safety. The gangs in the Homes were of a "retreatist" sort, in that they focused mainly on drugs, and their gang related activities, and would use whatever force necessary to keep their activities afloat. Drugs were a part of the boys every day life, and brutal drugs wars surrounded their apartment. With the gangs so close to home, the children had a constant fear of death....
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