For the past 25 years, crusading author Jonathan Kozol has exposed the stark inequalities that persist in our nation and their devastating consequences — a subject that few others were talking about when he started writing. With gripping accounts such as “Savage Inequalities” and “Amazing Grace,” he’s done more than perhaps anyone else to raise Americans’ consciousness about the systemic injustices that keep families trapped in poverty and prevent millions of children from reaching their potential.
It’s a topic that is more timely than ever. More Americans are wrestling with the challenges of poverty in the wake of the Great Recession and the foreclosure crisis, both of which hit families of color particularly hard. The gaping disparities between children of different racial and socioeconomic backgrounds take a massive toll on our nation — in moral, civic and economic terms.
(Crown) - ‘Fire in the Ashes: Twenty-Five Years Among the Poorest Children in America’ by Jonathan Kozol
Yet we also have more reasons for optimism than ever before. Today there is a robust national debate about the best ways to help children growing up in poverty and a fully fledged movement dedicated to ensuring educational opportunity for all kids — thanks in part to Kozol’s writing, which I have seen inspire countless individuals to become teachers or advocates. Over the past 20 years, we’ve benefited from huge advances in understanding what is possible for low-income students and the most effective ways to intervene on their behalf. We know that demographics need not be destiny.
So it is surprising and disappointing that “Fire in the Ashes,” Kozol’s new book, which is billed as the culminating work of his career, fails to engage with or acknowledge this rich modern context. His detachment from the landscape surrounding his book makes the problems he describes seem dated, rather than a crisis demanding the full attention and resources of our country in 2012.
“Fire in the Ashes” follows several of the children Kozol worked with years ago into adulthood to show how growing up in one of the poorest neighborhoods in the South Bronx affected the rest of their lives. The book is divided into two parts: The first half contains the stories of children who could not escape the abysmal conditions, and the second half tells the stories of the survivors. Most of the characters and stories are drawn from his previous works and will be familiar to many readers.
Kozol immerses readers in the lives of his characters as they grapple with the daily obstacles and indignities of racism and poverty. His long-term, personal relationships with the subjects enable him to bring us into their world in a way that a more detached journalist could not. The vignettes paint an engrossing if bleak picture of communities ravaged and lives ruined by drugs, disease, violence, incarceration, unemployment, homelessness, failing schools and endless instability.
“Fire in the Ashes” makes a compelling case that our society pays an enormous cost for failing to invest in the services and educational opportunities that children need to overcome the challenges of poverty. Kozol also shows what an immense difference people can make when they get directly involved in kids’ lives. When children from these communities make it, it’s almost always because along the way they lucked into finding an advocate who refused to let them fall through the cracks.
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