Amazing Grace Kozol Summary

Jonathan Kozol classic book Amazing Grace is about life and death in the south bronx, the poorest urban neighborhood of the United States. He brings you into overcrowded schools, dysfunctional hospitals, and rat infested homes where families have been ravaged by depression and anxiety, drug related violence, and the spread of AIDS. But he also introduces us to devoted and unselfish teachers, dedicated ministers, and at the heart and center of the book- courageous and delightful children. The children we come to meet through friendships they have formed with Jonathan abolishes the stereotypes of urban youth too frequently presented by the media. The children are tender, generous, and often religiously devout, they speak with eloquence and honesty …show more content…
But that doesn’t stop them from enjoying life and being kids. So he’s just sending a message also about how someone can look a certain way on the outside, but it doesn’t matter because they can be a whole different person in the inside. These kids just want love. They have lost most of their families so they aren’t used to someone caring for them and providing them what they need. While he was taking visits around the areas these people live in. It’s quite shocking how he described these areas. “ It looked like these places have been abandoned.” said Kozol. I can’t even imagine how these kids feel knowing they have literally nothing. Some don’t even have running water. He met a girl named Alice Washington, a survivor of three operations for cancer, lives in oppressive conditions, infected by her former husband with the AIDS virus, severed from welfare by the system which is known for destroying and robbing people's self respect. Even though she is infected and poor, she has dignity, even a nobility that is sadly lacking in her wealthy so called “betters”. They are thinking about quarantining the poor and greedily increasing their own excessive wealth. This is what bothers me, so many people out there in this world have so much money, but the reason they get so much money is basically by taking the poor peoples money causing them to struggle while they are living the life nobody wants to live. Alice’s son who is prematurely aged by worry and caring for his mother, still finishes high school with grades that earn for him a scholarship to college. A Survivor, David is filled with wisdom born of religious faith of jesus and observation that leads him to conclude that evil is what the rich have done to the poor in New

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Amazing Grace Kozol Summary