There Are No Children Here

Good book. Comfy blanket. Dorky socks.

Author: Alex Kotlowitz

Category: I had heard about this book in passing over the years, but was intrigued to start reading it after it was mentioned in A Hope in the Unseen.

My thoughts: This book was very good, but hard to read. I probably would have finished it earlier, but I couldn’t read too much at once because it was just so depressing. It raises a lot of questions with no solutions. There Are No Children Here is set in the Henry Horner Homes, brutal housing projects in Chicago, in the late 1980s. The story follows two young brothers, Lafeyette and Pharoah Rivers (that’s actually how their names are spelled—autocorrect does not approve) as they navigate this cruel world where drugs are sold, gangs run rampant, and murder is the norm. Their mother, LaJoe, has seven children in all at the age of thirty-five.

Reading this book, I was reminded of The Warmth of Other Suns. The occurrences in There Are No Children Here reveal the ugly underbelly of the Great Migration’s successors. Blacks who migrated to Chicago were forced to live in slummy sections of the city. Low-income housing (the projects) was built in the middle of the 20th Century ostensibly to provide shelter for the urban poor. But what was meant to be a solution created a much bigger problem. I was also reminded of the 1970s sitcom Good Times , which was set in Chicago, while reading this book. During the opening and closing credits of Good Times, the Cabrini-Green housing projects were featured. My mom said she never cared much for Good Times because nothing good ever happened to the Evans family until the very last episode. Reading this book, I see that this is how things are—in that way, the series reflected real life (that is, until that miraculous last episode when the stars suddenly and perfectly aligned for the Evans family). There are small victories for the Rivers family (Pharoah, who is more sensitive than his brother, gets second place in the spelling bee), but there is not a Deus ex machina that pulls the Rivers family out of poverty. There Are No Children Here reveals how people get trapped in this cycle of poverty, and it is very hard to break that cycle.

The book takes its name from a quote from Lafeyette and Pharoah’s mom, LaJoe: “But you know, there are no children here. They’ve seen too much to be children.” It’s really hard to read about these children who have witnessed so much horror and despair in their young lives. Lafeyette in particular is afraid to get close to people because he doesn’t know if they will either be a bad influence or end up getting killed. And, unfortunately, a quick Google search reveals that Lafeyette and Pharoah do not have real-life fairy tale endings. It’s also unfortunate that this cycle of violence is still going on in Chicago. And there seems to be no end in sight. There have been so many young lives snuffed out. Then I think about Cedric Jennings from A Hope in the Unseen, and if there are any differences between his situation and that of the Rivers family. What separated Cedric from Lafeyette and Pharoah was that he, Cedric, had a really strong, driven mother, a much better support system and way more stubbornness and drive. I think the key to getting out of poverty is access to a good education. However, that in itself is not exactly easy.

Great passage: For the first time, Pharoah, now ten, began to wonder aloud about being black. “Do all black people live in projects?” he asked his mother. “Do all black people be poor?” He was upset that Michael Dukakis hadn’t chosen Jesse Jackson at his running mate. “He might of won then,” he thought aloud. “Why don’t people elect black people?”

P.S. Even though Good Times was, at times, depressing, it was still funny.

Up next: Twilight Sleep, by my beloved Edith Wharton

A Hope in the Unseen

There's a book in my lap!

Author: Ron Suskind

Category: I first heard about this book two years ago. I filed it away in my mental “to read” list. I recently came across it again, and this time I actually decided to read it.

 My thoughts: This is a wonderful and inspiring book! A Hope in the Unseen is the story of Cedric Jennings, a star student at Washington, D.C.’s troubled Ballou High School. Being the star student makes Cedric a target, and he is pretty much a loner there. Also, Cedric’s father has been locked up for armed robbery and drug dealing for most of Cedric’s life. Cedric and his mother live in a rough neighborhood where drug dealers hang out on every corner. Before his senior year, Cedric participates in a summer program at M.I.T. Then, he is accepted into Brown University. But his journey does not end there. At Brown, he has to negotiate relationships with people who come from very different backgrounds than him, and grapple with knowledge that others have long been exposed to (Cedric had never heard of Ellis Island before he went to Brown). But Cedric, though flawed, is not only a fighter—he’s a survivor.

 The book exposes issues of race and class in the Ivy Leagues, and how lower-income minorities being accepted into and enrolling in Ivy League schools can be something of a double-edged sword. It’s a big victory, for sure, but there are some intangible roadblocks that these students have to overcome in addition to dealing with being away from home and handling with a rigorous courseload. So, Suskind mentions, the dropout rate among minorities is high (I don’t know if this has changed in the 14 years that this book has been published). Cedric absorbs all of this and fights against it.

 Although Cedric makes you want to root for him, sometimes his behavior is frustrating. He had to be a loner to survive his rough-and-tumble high school, but he continues his behavior of solitude at Brown, where people clearly want to get to know him. However, he manages to make a friend, Zayd Dohrn (whose parents are none other than Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dorhn, former members of the Weather Underground). Like I said, Cedric is a fighter, which is very admirable. He’s powered by faith, hustle, an iron will…and more than a little stubbornness. Cedric reminded me of Francie Nolan in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn—she was also a tough, impoverished kid who didn’t let obstacles defeat her (yes, I know that Francie is a fictional character). I’m glad that the story did not end with Cedric’s acceptance to Brown, as if the acceptance itself is a happy ending. It’s important to see the highs and lows of Cedric’s Brown experience.

 A couple of interesting things: Cedric goes to Brown in the fall of 1995, and there’s such a sense of that time in this book. There’s mention of SWV (who are making a comeback!), Smashing Pumpkins, the Million Man March, Jerry Garcia’s death, and the O.J. Simpson verdict. Also, Cedric discusses the Notorious B.I.G. with one of his fellow students, and I recalled, with a slight jolt, that Biggie was very much alive at this point. Also, before the first chapter, Suskind includes a quote from Tennyson’s “Ulysses.” As I’ve mentioned before, I love a good Tennyson allusion (or, in this case, a direct quote). So after seeing that, I knew I’d like this book. Speaking of “Ulysses,” the last line of the poem is “To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.” This, it seems, is Cedric Jennings’s mission.

 Great passage: He still hears the echo from rutted Southeast Washington and presses through gusts of thankfulness and survivor’s guilt to figure out why he escaped when so many—who are so much like him—did not. As he searches and learns more in classes and discussions about the country’s immigrant past, the phrase “a hope in the unseen” continues to resonate.  

 Up next: Since Cedric reminded me of Francie Nolan, I’m rereading A Tree Grows in Brooklyn