Name: Amazing Grace
Rating: 5 (2 reviews)
ISBN: 9780770435660

Jonathan Kozol

A profile of impoverished children in Mott Haven, South Bronx, reveals the human realities of their difficult lives and poses critical questions about the value of such children to an unsupportive nation. 125,000 first printing. Tour.

The Lives of Children and the Conscience of a Nation

Amazing Grace

The children in this book defy the stereotypes of urban youth too frequently presented by the media. Tender, generous and often religiously devout, they speak with eloquence and honesty about the poverty and racial isolation that have wounded but not hardened them. The book does not romanticize or soften the effects of violence and sickness. One fourth of the child-bearing women in the neighborhoods where these children live test positive for HIV. Pediatric AIDs, life-consuming fires and gang rivalries take a high toll. Several children die during the year in which this narrative takes place. A gently written work, Amazing Grace asks questions that are at once political and theological. What is the value of a child's life? What exactly do we plan to do with those whom we appear to have defined as economically and humanly superfluous? How cold -- how cruel, how tough -- do we dare be?

Amazing Grace The Lives of Children and the Conscience of a Nation

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