Free Essays - Amazing Grace :: Amazing Grace Essays

Within the next few pages hither I intend to address two issues. First I will try togive a personal review of what I proverb this check to hold, and second I will try explain therevelence which this book has to the field of Public Administration. First try to picturechildren in a slum where the squalor in their homes is just as bad as that which is in thestreets. Where prostitution is rampant, thievery a common place and put to death and death adaily occurrence. Crack-cocaine and heroin are sold in corner markets, and the dead eyesof men and women nomadic about aimlessly in the streets of Mott Haven are all tocommon., Their bodies riddled with disease, disease which seems to function theneighborhood. This is Mott Haven, in New York Citys South Bronx, the outback of thisAmerican nations poorest congressional district, excessively the setting of Jonathan Kozolsdisturbing representation of poverty in this country. The stories, which are captured dreadful approval, are told in the simplest terms. They are told by children who have seentheir parents die of back up and other disease, by mothers who complain about teenagersbagging dope and warhead guns on fire escapes, by clergy who teach the poor to fightunjustness and by police who are afraid to answer 911 calls. Kozol seems to be diminishabout the situation of the poor in American today, especially when more and more thepoor are blamed for being poor. Kozols personation of life in Mott Haven is gentle andpassionate. Even though rats whitethorn chew through apartment walls in the homes of MottHaven, the children still say their prayers at night. What seems to bother Kozol is thatmany people do not even wish to look at this picture of America, but in Amazing Gracehe dares us to recognize it does exist. Kozol spent a year wandering through Mott Haven and its neighboringcommunities visiting churches, schools, hospitals, parks, and homes. Talking with parentsand kids, social workers, spiritual leaders, and principals and teachers struggling to tryto understand how these children and parents cope with poverty and violence. Kozol trysto determine how their consort citizens can tolerate, even demand policies that guaranteemisery and death for those funding a few subway stops north of glitzy midtown Manhattan. Perhaps nonentity can halt the tides of social policy where citizens of this nation areallowed to brave in such conditions. If on the other hand anything can, it may be Kozolsforecasting visions and the openness and humanity of the remarkable people whose