There Are No Children Here: The Story of Two Boys Growing Up in The Other America

I have to give Alex five stars.This book is well written which makes it such a good read.Mr. Kotlowitz did his research the old fashion way.There is no other way Alex could have gathered the information he had to write this book without boots on ground as well as door to door interviews.Example there is one page where the book reads about a random car passing by with its radio playing a song by Keith Sweat.Fall of 87 through fall of 88, Mr. Sweat ruled the radio airwaves in Chicago.I believe Mr. Kotlowtiz was standing right in the heart of that community interviewing and taking notes when that car passed by playing that song during that time.I prefer the real and this book is as real as it gets.

I started reading this book 2 days ago, and am now about half way done with it. This book is both horrific and inspiring, and I have difficulty putting it down. I am about the same age as the two brothers, which means I was growing up with them, but in another state. To compare my childhood, and what I understood about life at this age, to their childhood and what they understood...well, there isn't a comparison, really. They knew more of life and death and struggle at 11 than I'll likely ever know, and my childhood wasn't rainbows and unicorns.I think everyone should read this book, at least to gain some perspective about some of things the rest of us argue over yet know nothing about.

A fine portrait of a Chicago family surviving but taking wounds from poverty, bureaucracy, violence, bigotry, some wounds arguably self-inflicted but many otherwise. Alex Kotlowitz focuses with genuine friendship on two young brothers and their mom, of an extended family living cramped in criminally mis-managed public housing projects. I haven't read anything else that documents in such close quarter this life I haven't known -- though it was but a few miles from my home, and I'm sure time passing since publication of There Are No Children Here has changed little for people in seemingly permanent financial distress of what LaJoe Rivers and her sons Lafayette and Pharoah experienced.

This book takes you on a bit of a vicarious journey that explores tough choices, disappointment and death in the individual yet collective lives of an impoverished family in Chicago's Horner Homes. By the time i finished the book, I felt that some of my perceptions of impoverished life had changed in that when you see how the system and street-level bureaucrats inadvertently and sometimes purposely use systematic elements such as authority and ill-conceived procedures to hold families down; you begin to realize that while all who live in poverty aren't saints that many of them are trying, despite the system, to get out.Overall, if you really want to know what we are up against as community developers and administrators in impoverished urban American, READ THIS BOOK! I am glad I added it to my library.

Reading this book changed my life, and I can't say that lightly. After reading this book and doing some research on my own, I've started interning and doing campaigns on social policy reform. It's a very simple read with many complex thoughts. I had the privilege of meeting the author and found him to be a humble but brilliant man. This story is not an isolated case and it is so important that we all know about it. Great book.

This book is about a family living in the Henry Horner housing project in Chicago during a couple years in the 80's, primarily dealing with two boys, Lafayette, who's 11 at the beginning of the book and his younger brother Pharoah, who's 9. They live with their mother LaJoe, their siblings and various relatives who come and go, sometimes including their father.It's a rough neighborhood and they have to contend with drug dealers, over crowded schools, random gunfire, poor housing, hostility from the police, amongst other problems. The kids are used to ducking for cover when they hear a gunfight break out outside their apartment. They have a bathtub that never stops running and an oven that doesn't always work. They have friends who are murdered.It's a tough place to grow up but the author gives us their positive moments. Pharoah is an aspiring spelling bee competitor and has a personal refuge in a grassy neighborhood a few blocks away. Lafayette befriends an amateur local dj and helps his mother take care of the household.This is an amazing book. It reminded me of great 19th century authors like Dickens. It's that good. Recommended with no qualifications whatsoever.

Trying to make me feel bad? Sorry, boring read. Tries and fails to pull on the heart strings

I found this to be a telling account of one of America's most shameful faces: allowing our fellow citizens to live under such squalid conditions with no hope in sight. The author depicts realistically the story of one African American family in Chicago with a devoted mother, an impaired and absent father, and kids of indomitable spirit who are buffered by factors not of their own making.Unfortunately, Ronald Reagan's image of welfare mothers driving Cadillacs persist today, perhaps even more so than when he spoke of it in the 80's. But this book explains the realities of good people in horrible circumstances, doing the best they can for their kids and the kids struggling to survive, never mind thrive, in incredibly bad circumstances.I only hope that conditions have improved since this book was written...but I strongly suspect they haven't. Until we help people in these circumstances, America in its own right, will be a third world country, regrettably.