There Are No Children Here by Alex Kotlowitz - Book Report/Review Example

There Are No Children Here- Narrative Review and Character Assessment Alex Kotlowitz, in his book, “There Are No Children Here”, describes the biography of two brothers, Lafeyette and Pharoas Rivers, who lived with their mother in Henry Horner Homes, which is a housing project run by criminals. The two brothers were constantly striving with the hard life they had to live, where criminals tempted children into selling drugs and storing weapons. Narrative Review What impacted me at personal level was how poor children got indulged into crime and drugs just because they were homeless. Another important theme that can be seen throughout the book, and that has continued to impact my values and beliefs, is racism. The people living in the housing projects suffered from racial discrimination which limited their potential to survive as proud people. This section describes how poverty of the homeless people and racism affected my personal values system. I have been meeting a lot of homeless people for some years, in order to figure out what problems that they went through. This book helped me a lot in understanding the sufferings of the homeless and of the poor. Among many other problems that I learnt about, one was about the poor children getting indulged in crime at a very young age. Just like the book describes about the children of the residents of the housing project, I found out that criminal behavior was a main character trait of children and teens born to poverty stricken families. The line in Chapter 6: “His face masked his troubles. It was a face without effect, without emotion” (Kotlowitz, 1991, p. 55), reminded me of the faces of the homeless children I had met some years ago. Abuse, neglect, little or no education, and lack of adequate paying jobs, are contributing factors to this detriment. When children see that the local drug dealer can make more money in one day than their own parents can make in a month of hard work, they tend to choose crime over patience. LaJoe’s statement goes very well with this: “But you know, there are no children here. They’ve seen too much to be children” (Kotlowitz, 1991, p.x). I also learnt that if the parents were not around to give positive reinforcement to their children, they turned to gangs in order to get the attention they lacked at home, which in turn contributed to violent behavior and drug abuse. They were more likely to suffer young and violent deaths due to the poor judgment and decision making, as we read in Chapter 5, “Were gonna die one way or another by killing or plain out" (Kotlowitz, 1991, p. 51). Another aspect of the book is racism, which I believe affects the lives of the homeless people more than any other group of people living in the same society. The black residents of the housing projects in the story had to face through racial discrimination at the hands of the whites. It was the blacks whose children were often found dead, and no police reporting supported their families. They were also lured into drug dealing. The Rivers family had to go through the same suffering. Kotlowitz (1991, p.21) writes, “White politicians wanted neither poor nor black families in their communities…”, which shows hatred toward the people of color. This strengthened my belief that no matter how modern the society has become, we have not been able to come out of the old concept of racism. Character Assessment I would choose the character of Lafeyette, the eleven year old boy, because it was him who provoked a serious thought inside me, about the rebellious feelings of the child when he was burdened with family responsibilities. He was only eleven years old. He had to look after his brother, and had to become his mother’s confidant after his father left them. Why he became a miserable young man, with “the hollowness of his face” (Kotlowitz, 1991, p.55), instead of a healthy minded, happy person, is very understandable. I believe that when a child is given extra responsibilities, it rips him of his innocence and childhood bliss, which is his basic right. Just because Lafeyette was a child of poor parents, and had to live at a housing project, he had to live a life full of responsibilities. He never knew what childhood was like. All he knew was poverty, hunger, bullets, and racial disparities. All he had to think about was how he was going to survive the harshness of the world around him. Why “his face seemed incapable of expression” (p.280), and why “he was just tired of being” (p.260) was comprehensible. Kotlowitz writes about him (p.15): “Sometimes the strain of responsibility showed in his thin, handsome face; it would tighten, like a fist, and it would seem as if he would never smile again.” The concepts of racism, poverty, violence, drugs, and child killings, made him rebellious toward the society. Kids like Lafeyette make me ponder upon the brutal aspects of society when it comes to involving children. For me, childhood is something that is to be enjoyed at its fullest without a single trace of carefulness, responsibility, and rebellion. I found Lafeyette’s character very rebellious, but very gloomy at the same time. Kotlowitz (1991, p.14) writes: “In her husbands absence, Lafayette had become LaJoes confidant. She relied on him. So did the younger children.” These responsibilities had turned him into a morose and bossy young man. This made me very gloomy, because I felt like thinking about the sufferings of all those homeless families and their children that I had met a couple of years ago. I wish that I could do something for such poor children, for whom the world has become cruel and indifferent. For me, an eleven year old is supposed to play hide and seek with his friends, instead of listening to the death news of his friends, making him all the more defiant. Hence, the character of Lafeyette is very thought-provoking, at least for me, inspiring me to raise voice for children rights. References Kotlowitz, A. (1991). There Are No Children Here: The Story of Two Boys Growing Up in the Other America. USA: Anchor Books. Read More