Amazing Grace

Text to Self- “Crack-cocaine addiction and the intravenous use of heroin, which children I have met here call “the needle drug,” are woven into the texture for existence in Mott Haven” (Kozol 1996: 4). As a young girl I would run down into the basement to see my daddy after preschool and kindergarten. Everyday when I went back upstairs for a snack with my mom I would ask, “why does daddy always have snowflakes with him?” Much like the children in the south Bronx, New York I became accustomed to and desensitized by the use and exposure of crack-cocaine. At a young age I knew my dad had two sides, one where snowflakes would make him angry, yell in rage, and abuse me and another side where he would spoil me and take me to get ice cream. Reading Amazing Grace only confirmed my theory that children at such a young age retain information and become knowledgeable in such complex concepts such as drugs and the affects they have. However, my personal experience with lethal drugs was short lived after my father passed away when I was nine. The kids in the text are exposed to an excruciating lifestyle where drugs are just a single factor in their every day life. To say that I can compare my life to the lives of these children living in this setting would be ridiculous. I grew up in a privileged family; I was a spoiled girl that never had to worry about food, shelter, clothes and illness. I have never seen conditions even close to this, and to empathize with these children is haunting.

Text to Text- “Social stratification creates both “haves” and “have-nots.” All systems of social inequality create poverty, or at least relative poverty, the lack of resources of some people in relation those who have more” (Macionis 2009: 236). Poverty, discussed in chapter eight in Macionis largely connects to Kozol’s text, as his foundation is a powerful portrait of children suffering from poverty in urban America. The unfortunate truth about the south Bronx is the constant continuum of...