Let me ask you these questions: Do you evade bullets while you sleep in an apartment occupied by 13 people? Do you have to do your laundry in your own bath tub because going to the laundry room proves to be too dangerous? Do you also have to do your dishes in the same bathe tub just because your sink in the kitchen hasn’t been functioning in months? Is the environment you live in one wherein there is not a single role model, the gangs run roughshod on everything, and nobody can trust anybody? These might sound strange questions to you, but there ARE people whose answers to these questions might be a lot different from your answers. Welcome to the “other America”. Alex Kotlowitz narrates the story of two young boys “growing up in the other America” in the novel he wrote, “There are No Children Here (Kotlowitz, 1992).”
The “other America” Kotlowitz refers to is a public housing complex located in Henry Horner Homes in Chicago (Kotlowitz, 1992). This book tracks the lives of Lafeyette, 10, and Pharoah, 7, from the summer of 1985 to the fall of 1989. Though the boys are young, Kotlowitz is able to adeptly convey to his readers that these boys are not children at all. They have not been permitted to live carefree lives majority of us have done. All throughout their childhood, they have opened their eyes to the difficulties in life, and learned to cope with them. At a tender age, they have gone to more funerals than they have to weddings, hardening their hearts to the point of crushing their spirits.
Pharoah and Lafayette encounter too many difficulties each day. Once a beautiful apartment complex, their abode now contains only broken appliances, no security and almost zero plumbing. From the basement emanates awful odors which the housing supervisor calls as “foul odors” that “no equipment presently in use by staff could be used to withstand the odor beyond a minute (Kotlowitz, 1992, p. 240).”
Each morning, the two boys wake up in this scenario. As Lafayette and Pharoah prepare for school, they get into clothes washed in the bath tub, then go out in the streets for their walk to school. While doing so, they must be on their toes, alert for stray bullets which could kill them, as it did some of their friends. Between the two brothers, it is Pharoah who likes school, since it gives him an opportunity to get out of the misery of their neighborhood. Kotlowitz conveys that Pharoah wants to eventually graduate from high school. Lafayette is not keen with school at all. The minute they arrive at the Henry Suder Elementary, Pharoah, Lafayette and their peers receive a kind of education way far behind than their peers in private schools. According to a testing and poll conducted by the state, students at the two boys’ school are behind other kids their age. This is because their school did not have the sufficient budget to hire enough teachers needed to give each child the adequate attention they need. Because of the school’s location, it was difficult to hire people whose lives could be endangered by a mere walk from school building to parking lot to get in their cars, due to stray bullets or muggers.
This is very unfortunate because education is the only way out, the only hope that these children have from escaping the violence in their neighborhood. Gang mentality is quite sick to most of us, but for people in Lafayette’s and Pharoah’s lives, it is a necessity. Most teen-agers in the two boys’ environment ultimately want to be a part of something bigger than themselves to give them a purpose for life.
The actual story of living life on welfare makes this book enlightening to people interested in the welfare program in the US. The two boys’ family is strikingly poor.
Without a welfare check, the family would starve and live in the streets. The two boys’ mother, LaJoe, finds it impossible to land a job because she has many children to attend to, and has limited skills. Apart from Lafeyette and Pharoah, there are five more children in the family. Her eldest daughter is a drug addict, so LaJoe sees to her two grandchildren. One of her sons is in and out of jail, and she has a set of triplets under the age of five. Without transportation and the money to get on any kind of transportation, it is virtually impossible to leave the neighborhood to hunt for employment elsewhere. Most importantly the novel points us to the reality that the state has no provisions for childcare while the parent on welfare attempts to land a job.
The absence of role models was aptly highlighted by Kotlowitz. It is “estimated 85% of the households at Horner are headed by women” (Kotlowitz, 1992, p.65). The kids in the neighborhood seldom see men take responsibility for things that they do. Most of these men are either into gangs, or incarcerated. The only males they encounter are police officers, which chances are, do not make for good confrontations. “As early as 1968, the Kerner Commission, appointed by President Johnson to explore the problems facing the nation’s inner cities, characterized the relationship between the armed authorities and the black community nationwide as “explosive” (Kotlowitz, 1992, p. 162). It is apparent that this “explosive” kind of relationship truly makes it hard for the kids to trust the police officers, more so as role models.
While chronicling the two boys’ lives, Kotlowitz made arrangements for them to attend a private school nearby. As I, too, believe, the best solution for children like Pharoah and Lafayette is to show them that a better life is possible through education.
Unfortunately, near the end of the book, Lafayette showed signs that he was being sucked into the ghetto life. As he entered his teen years, he was becoming more indifferent to life. His father for one, played a minor role in the boy’s life. The death of an older friend, Craig, in the hands of the police blurred his visions of right and wrong. He eventually ended up joining a pre-teen gang, and began getting cited for misdemeanors.
There Are No Children Here gave the ghetto a name and a face. Kotlowitz stirred in us emotions for the deprived children of the ghetto. It opened our eyes to bureaucratic ills and shortcomings, and how it destroys the future of some of America’s youth. Had they been born in different circumstances, Pharoah and Lafayette would be lovable, healthy and full of potential. Secure.
A Critique
The very first thing you notice about Kotlowitz’s book is that it is very different. It is not written for academics. There is an absence of citations, and no special emphasis on details. Kotlowitz does not try to support his findings with hard facts and statistics. All Kotlowitz says is that his book follows the lives of Lafeyette and Pharaoh, two brothers, over a two-year period. Nevertheless, if the book was written for academic purposes, there would be some problems.
Kotlowitz uses many tactics to elicit emotions from his reader. He utilizes poetic language and imagery to make people feel for the kids in the story (Kotlowitz, 1992, p.45) His sources of information would be questioned. If he is using LaJoe’s and the two boy’s versions of what was occurring, self-report bias questions would ensue. Are they telling the actual truth or did they embellish for effect?
Actually, There Are No Children Here seems more like an advocacy or crusade, rather than a study. Kotlowitz made his observations aware of what he wished to convey to readers, as he says so in the preface. However, Kotlowitz did a great job of providing a human element to the facts that he presented.
References
- Kotlowitz, Alex. There Are No Children Here: The Story of Two Boys Growing Up in the Other America. Doubleday and Co. Inc., 1992.
