What Are They Reading?

THERE ARE NO CHILDREN HERE:
The Story of Two Boys Growing Up in the Other America.
By Alex Kotlowitz.
Anchor Books. 336 pp. $14.95 Paper.

In the summer of 1987 the Henry Horner Homes, one of Chicago's worst housing projects, sheltered 6,000 people, 4,000 of them children. Two of those thousands--Pharoah and Lafeyette Rivers--are the subjects of There Are No Children Here, Alex Kotlowitz's 1991 book on the plight of children in poverty.

Kotlowitz opens his book on a June day, as Pharoah and Lafeyette hunt for snakes along dusty railroad tracks. This is an unusual event for the 9- and 11-year-old brothers--they are not often afforded the luxury of childhood games. By their teens the boys have seen friends die, their brother go to prison, their father descend into drug addiction and their mother lose welfare benefits. Still, against all odds, they cling to their childhood and fight to get out of Horner.

Just a mile from downtown Chicago, Horner spans eight city blocks near the stadium where the Chicago Bulls play. The projects have cinder-block walls, ten-by-eleven-foot bedrooms and linoleum floors; bathroom medicine cabinets are two-sided, and shared with neighboring units (numerous robberies, assaults and even murders have resulted from residents tearing out cabinets and crawling through). Two rival gangs claim Horner as their turf--gunfire can be heard at all hours of the day and night. The Rivers apartment is without a shower, the bathtub's faucet constantly runs and a mysterious stench wafts from the toilet (dead animals found rotting in the basement are later identified as the culprit). The neighborhood itself boasts little; there are no banks, libraries or movie theaters.

The Rivers family moved to Horner in 1956, when their mother, LaJoe, was 4. It had been a different place then; LaJoe attended Girl Scout meetings and roller-skating parties in her unit's basement. Elected officials stopped by to talk with residents and children played freely on outdoor jungle gyms and swings. But by 1987, there is little left for the children of Horner. It's no wonder that the students of Henry Suder Elementary, where Pharoah and Lafeyette attended school, test below their grade levels. Having lost her three oldest to the neighborhood, LaJoe is determined to shelter these two from the gangs, drugs and violence that surround them. "Tomorrow is not promised for us. You take tomorrow for granted and it could be you tomorrow," 17-year-old Carla Palmore tells mourners at the funeral of Lafeyette's friend Bird Leg.

Although it is twelve years old, Kotlowitz's haunting portrait of poverty in America has hardly aged; the plight of poor children--and their numbers--have barely improved in the past two decades. It's all too easy to ignore poor people in this country--they live in segregated ghettos and depressed rural outposts--and when we do hear about them it's typically through legislative battles, policy news and statistics. Kotlowitz has drawn a rich portrait of poor urban life complete with characters that we come to deeply care for--and it is this that sets There Are No Children Here apart from other books of its kind.

According to Columbia University's National Center for Children in Poverty, 16 percent of American children lived in poverty in 2001--roughly the same number as in 1980. Can President Bush reasonably argue that he is leaving no child behind when there are nearly 12 million children living in poverty? When nine kids are killed by guns each day? When 9 million children go without health insurance? A powerful and beautifully written coming-of-age story, and a critical text for anyone in America concerned with social justice, There Are No Children Here provides an indisputable reminder that no healthy society can exist without solid foundations.

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