not care, or are glad to be separated from them. Such is the problem in New York City today and in Mott Haven in Jonathan Kozol's Amazing Grace. I have lived in New York City all my life and I had no idea that these problems were going on so close to home. If I live about three miles away from Mott Haven and I am not aware of the situation there, then who is? Chapter 1 of Amazing Grace opens with a startling fact. It tells the reader that when one boards the Number 6 train from Manhattan to the
Jonathan Kozol's book, Amazing Grace, analyzes the lives of the people living in the dilapidated district of South Bronx, New York. Kozol spends time touring the streets with children, talking to parents, and discussing the appalling living conditions and safety concerns that plague the residents in the inner cities of New York. In great detail, he describes the harsh lifestyles that the poverty stricken families are forced into; day in and day out. Disease, hunger, crime, and drugs are of the
disease which seems to control the neighborhood. This is Mott Haven, in New York City's South Bronx, the outback of this American nation's poorest congressional district, also the setting of Jonathan Kozol's disturbing representation of poverty in this country. The stories, which are captured Amazing Grace, are told in the simplest terms. They are told by children who have seen their parents die of AIDS and other disease, by mothers who complain about teenagers bagging dope and loading guns on
of the children in Jonathan Kozol's Amazing Grace. Who defines them as 'other'? How? What makes them feel like 'nobodies'? What makes them feel like 'somebodies'? What is the role of religion in this daily struggle for human dignity? Drugs, violence, prostitution, pollution, infestation, and sickness of all kinds are present in South Bronx, New York. Unfortunately, children are surrounded and involved in all these problems and more. In Jonathan Kozol’s novel Amazing Grace, an evil reality
whole class of people in between. I’ve always heard of poverty and didn’t know much more about it except for the fact that people existed that were less fortunate, those who lived in this supposed poverty. Jonathan Kozol’s book “Amazing Grace” depicts the issues that face families who are living in a world of poverty, homelessness and in a world where less fortunate is an understatement. Kozol writes about his experience in the South Bronx where he comes across some of the
Jonathan Kozol's Amazing Grace is a book about the trials and tribulations of everyday life for a group of children who live in the poorest congressional district of the United States, the South Bronx. Their lives may seem extraordinary to us, but to them, they are just as normal as everyone else. What is normal? For the children of the South Bronx, living with the pollution, the sickness, the drugs, and the violence is the only way of life many of them have ever known. In this book, the
and violence are an enormous problem making living conditions next to impossible. In Amazing Grace by Jonathan Kozol we are taken inside this forgotten place through eyewitness accounts and personal stories, we learn just how troubling poverty really is, and the problems that have created such poverty to begin with. The issue of poverty is much more complex than can be understood at surface level. Amazing Grace breaks through that barrier and shows that it is government injustices, separation of
Jonathan Kozol's Amazing Grace is a book that describes the everyday horrors and struggles for survival, for a group of elementary girls and boys who are growing up in the South Bronx, the poorest congressional district in the United States. "When you enter the train, you are in the seventh richest congressional district in the nation. When you leave, you are in the poorest." This unimaginable way of life seems normal to these children because they really don't know any better. Normal to them
to members of an ethical community by encouraging them continually to reevaluate their actions and character in reference to postulated ideals, it also leads us to be quite wary of judging individual's moral motives from the outside. A passage by Jonathan Kozol is cited that suggests our society routinely demands supererogatory action from its poorest members. This is illegitimate since they live in conditions that alienate rather than integrate them both with themselves and with the rest of the community