Amazing Grace By John Kozol Essay, Research Paper
Chris Benson Benson1
Mrs. Nicholaides
Humanities
10/14/99
Jonathan Kozol s Wueltunshuung
In the book Amazing Grace, Jonathan Kozol uses his unique ability
to express his experiences, to the reader. He arranges the focus of the
novel to modify the story. He takes the reader inside the Bronx and
shows social injustice. Kozol is able to express the story in such a
manner as to enable the reader to imaginatively participate, truly
broadening and deepening his sense of the experience. The tools Kozol
uses to invoke great emotion from the reader is what makes this book a
work of art. He cleverly centers his story around characters for whom
most readers would feel the highest emotional involvement for. Kozol s
choice of setting is ideal for the story because it is in a city to which he
gives no accolades.
The Walden book review praises Kozol on his style and
storytelling. It compliments his realistic views and gives credit to his
gloomy underlying tone to the story. The critic wrote:
The thesis may very well hit close to the mark. But Kozol, to
his credit, doesn t claim too much or pretend to have all the
answers. He presents his evidence and yes, his thoughts
without claiming any lock on the truth here. His evidence
stronly supports his dim perspective. The South Bronx for
example, has an epidemic of severe asthma. He cites
statistics showing hospital admissions for asthma at six or
more per thousand people in the South Bronx
neighborhoods, and 1.8 per thousand statewide in New York.
Although residents say they know the asthma epidemic s
likely cause is the recently built incinerator nearby, Kozol
explains that the assertion is both plausible and difficult to
pin down (Walden Web Book reviews).
Kozol s greatest tool is his focus on children. He chronicles the
inner city youths and their struggles with society. Most of them are
sickly and underfed, as a result of parental and governmental neglect.
The use of children is powerful because the child is an innocent and
pure person. The corruption and evils that overtake these children
leave us with heavy hearts. The fact that the youngsters did not
deserve the horrible things that were thrust upon them and their
helplessness gives the reader a taste for the urban tragedies. He uses
the children brilliantly because their innocence allows them to remain
pure and hopeful even though they are in a slum area with little hope
for a bright future. The child is ideal for a character because everyone
can relate to being a child. Not everyone has been a doctor, clerk or
accountant, but everyone has been an innocent child once in their lives.
Also people will feel sympathy toward the youths because of they are
innocence. No one would feel as much sympathy for a thief or addict,
because they are bringing evil upon themselves, whereas a child is
thrust into the evils of society.
The Elliot Bay book company wrote a review dealing with Kozol
and his choice of setting. Claiming that it was a brilliant choice for
this kind of story, the critic says:
Jonathan Kozol speaks through hearts and minds of the
children who live daily in war zone of drugs, prostitution,
gunfire, and illness. Children tell of their dreams and
worries; those who want to get a good education, eat
snowcones, or enjoy a small packet of cookies, deal with
AIDS, rape, and hunger on a daily basis. This emphasizes
the point that the children are able to see past all of the
crime and poverty to their hopes and dreams. The critic
concludes by writing, This is not an easy book to read, yet
these children s stories are full of tenderness, and love, and
grace. This is a neighborhood where people try to get by
and that our country tires to forget(T.A.T. 1).
That review is a summary of his genius. Kozol is able to write
using the perspective of the poor, without trying to preach a reform. He
leaves an ominous message and realistically says that there is little
hope for the victims of society.
Kozol is so intent on helping the children and bringing focus to
their needs that he talked to the Children s Express News Team. In
this discussion he talked about the racism and neglect of the city kids.
The children that he follows are mostly black or hispanic and are the
subject of racial neglect, according to Kozol. Kozol said in the
discussion with the Children s Express New York Bureau, Most black
kids in America grow up and don t know any white people. (Children s
News Express Bureau) Kozol stated in that same discussion that New
York City, which is one of the most racist cities in world, has dumped
all its toxic industries in the neighborhoods where poor black and
Latino children live. The rich and powerful white folks in New York City
need a place to put a big sewage plant. (Children s News Express
Bureau)
As he is discussing the underprivileged youths, Kozol mentions
that the children of the South Bronx are very religious. He feels that,
the young and poor often have more faith than those who have material
power. He is quoted in the article saying The children raise
questions of good and evil more often than most children I ve met in the
United States. I think that when people know hunger and
homelessness and sadness and depression they re more open to
religious thoughts. Kozol has been quoted saying that he has become
more religious since his interviews in the city. He says I long to
believe there is a heaven because it seems unbearable that the children
I met won t have something wonderful for them after they
die. (Manning 1) Barbara Ehrnreich also comments on the spirituality
of the book. She writes
Kozol reminds us that, with each casualty, part of the beauty
of the world is extinguished, because these are the children
of intelligence and humor, of poetic insight and luminous
faith. Amazing Grace is written in a gentle and measured
tone, but you will wonder at the end, with Kozol, why the
God of love does not return to earth with his avenging sword
in hand(Ehrneich1)
Kozol lists some of the youths and their tragic endings which are
unthinkable to most readers. He gives them names and families so that
they stick in the reader s mind and don t become a faceless mass to be
forgotten. One example of this is Ebony Williams, a little girl who is
incinerated in a pampers box near the Bruckner Expressway. Most
readers could not even begin to imagine how or why that occurred. The
surprise does not sit with the reader long as they continue and learn of
the Dukes brothers. Judson and Steven Dukes both die in one year.
One brother falls off a roof and the other dies of illness because of the
unsanitary living conditions of the city. He doesn t stop after describing
them, he artfully describes their mother and how hard it was for her.
That helps to insert a picture into the reader s mind. These
monstrosities are in addition to the countless youths who are shot to
death or killed in various fires, which are all too familiar to the
occupants of the South Bronx.
The city and its officials are set in the role of the villain, just as
they are with many of the poor citizens who feel neglected. This is a
unique tool because often in literature and entertainment, the city is
seen as a helpful friend to the people. In one instance in the story,
there is a little boy who is playing in a hallway and leans against an
elevator shaft. The shaft doors open and the boy falls to his death. The
building had not been inspected recently and the building management
did little to repair the door. The city on the other hand blamed the
parents for letting their child play around in a hazardous area. To this
Kozol writes, Going outside for youngsters in the building, means
going in to the hallway, since the real outside, where they could get
some clean air, is just too dangerous. (Kozol 99) That statement
paints a terrifying picture of a place where a run down hall way with a
faulty elevator shaft is the safest place for kids to socialize. Another
example is that of Mrs. Washington, a woman who is dying of AIDS.
She is forced clean her own hospital room after she checks in. Even
the little things that most people take for granted are nonexistent for
her and her peers in the Bronx.
From there Kozol uses the view point of the poor to assault city
hall. He lists the programs that had been cut by Mayor Guliani,
including sanitation and inspection services as well as many
rehabilitation programs. Also tax cuts in Manhattan, that benefit only
the five percent of the population who also have incomes of over
$100,000, are of no help to the minorities dying of poverty in the
South Bronx. These cuts are funded by laying off many social service
agents who also happen to be mostly black and hispanic women. This
means that the ratio of two hundred cases to one worker will grow even
more uneven. Kozol continues to emphasize his point by quoting the
mayor in his talks with children, I think largely you have to help
yourself….Look at what is there and take advantage of it. (Kozol 101)
However, Kozol then reveals that Guliani soon cancels 11,000 jobs for
children of their ages, as well as afterschool programs in which
children would be safe while families work. This basically means that
city hall has decided that poor families will have to manage without
public help.
Kozol stays away from the beneficial actions of city hall because
he believes that the benefits are given mainly to the white middle and
upper class citizens. He writes irately on how the inspection program
for apartment buildings are cut. Two of the children who he interviews
are killed in different apartment fires. He describes the illegally barred
windows and fire escapes, the non-fire retardant building materials and
the lack of fire safety items such as an extinguishers or fire alarms.
Kozol also lashes out at the press and media for making the many
cases seem impersonal and the victims faceless. He writes, The
victims soon dissolve into a vague scenario of sadness that can seem
uncomfortably abstract (Kozol 132) He uses this to evoke frustration
from his readers because there is little to be done about the fires, and
it seems as though those with the power simply turn their heads. He
has collected several headlines to exemplify of his point. Fiery Tomb
For Two Bronx Kids, from the Daily News. No Escape, reads a
second headline. Trapped Tot Killed In Apartment Blaze, reads a
headline one day later. Apartment Fire Kills Bronx Boy is another.
Bronx Apartment Blaze Kills Mom and Son, reads one more vague
description. The final headline was for a fire in which the mother and
son had died together. The boy was believed to be somewhat retarded,
however he actually had only a learning disability which was
undetected early because there was not sufficient help for him from the
schools.
Kozol proposes several different systems to help. They include
AIDS awareness and treatment, correction facilities, and protection and
security measures. He also enumerates programs which are needed
such as thirteen shelters, twelve soup kitchens, eleven free
foodpantries and what he calls an empowerment zone, or enterprise
zone , which would be a business that generates jobs for a small
fraction of the people who reside in the slums. Kozol adds an
explanation to this,
All of these strategies and services are needed-all these and
hundreds more- if our society intends to keep on placing
those it sees as unclean in the unclean places. In reality, it
is a form of quarantine, says Ana Oliver, who directs an
agency that serves ex-prison inmates who have AIDS, not
just people who have AIDS but people who have everything
we fear, sickness, color, destitution-but it has been carried
out in ways that seem compatible with humane
principles(Kozol 137).
Kozol quotes a woman from the South Bronx who acknowledges
the evils. She says Evil exists? Yes I said that. People who let other
people be destroyed do evil. People who know but do not act do evil. I
don t know if I would call them evil but they re certainly not thinking
about heaven. (Kozol 96) He told critic Anita Manning that the people
there were nothing to fear and it was the society that was scary. He
proclaimed, I m far more terrified of the icy equanimity of corporate
attorneys in Manhattan than any drug dealers in the South Bronx. Those
corporate attorneys are killing far more people and doing it with the
illusion of innocence.
Kozol has a unique ability to express his views with facts and
statistics.
to complete his thoughts and send them from his vision to the reader s
vision. He attempts to go after the prison and correction programs of
the city. He comes out with an alarming figure that the city spends,
fifty-eight thousand dollars a year on each adult inmate and seventy
thousand on each juvenile. These are disproportionate figures to start
with but he drives home his point by adding that each is about ten
times as much as what it spends on educating a child in its public
schools. (Kozol 142)
The setting Kozol uses is a powerful tool in his vision of the world.
The rundown city of the South Bronx is a consummate choice. This is
an area that has a minute amount of income and little hope for
improvement. The South Bronx is one of the most racially as well as
economically segregated areas in the country. There are virtually no
prosperous citizens and very few are white. Kozol has picked an area
that receives ineffectual government help and a place whose existence
most ordinary people don t want to even acknowledge. The filth ridden
streets and condemnable buildings are home to the elderly,
hardworking, and children, in addition to drug dealers, prostitutes and
criminals. After hearing Kozol s description of the area as a rat s nest,
one cannot help but wonder how the children are able to remain
spiritually faithful and hopeful.
One major part of the setting is St. Ann s Episcopal Church. The
building occupies a spacious close along St. Ann s Avenue opposite 140th
Street in the Bronx. It is more than just a museum; it is a virtual center of
community activity. Mott Haven-St. Ann s neighborhood-is the heart of the
poorest congressional district in the United States of America. St. Ann s
addresses the urgent needs of its neighbors with food and assistance.
The church has developed a dramatically successful afterschool program
for elementary school children. This is an example of how a small
number of people are successfully trying to make a difference, yet on the
whole, Kozol believes that society leaves much to be desired in our
treatment of one another.
Kozol believes that society is largely responsible for each citizen.
Using the prisons again to transfer his thoughts to the reader, he reveals
that nearly three quarters of the inmates of state prisons in New York are
from the same seven neighborhoods of New York City. They are the South
Bronx, Harlem, Brownsville, Bedford-Stuvyesant, South Jamaica, East
New York, and the Lower East Side of Manhattan. All but one of the
neighborhoods are deeply segregated ghetto neighborhoods. Kozol
demonstrates how the racist city cares little for the minority groups and
that it is this neglect that turns these city blocks into breeding grounds for
criminal activity. His message that segregation and lack of money is a
cause of crime is clear because of his continuous focus on the negative
effects of poverty. White rich neighborhoods are virtually crime free in
comparison. A black man in New York is fourteen times as likely to be
incarcerated as a white man. A hispanic man is twelve times as likely to
be imprisoned and ninety seven percent of juveniles imprisoned in secure
detention are either hispanic or black.
Kozol offers a solution of sorts when he tells Anita Manning of USA
Today, and she quotes him,
The problem is not beyond our ability to solve, Kozol says. Rather,
we lack the spiritual will to act on what we know…. No matter
what some racists or hardhearted people think of women of color,
the children have done nothing wrong. They ve done nothing, and
they re too sweet to even hate us. We re allowing them to die.
Kozol is able to clearly transfer his vision to the reader in his
treatise, Amazing Grace, by using several tools that hit the reader hard.
But it is probably the way he blends them together that makes his work
stand out. One is his use of the children and their purity. No one can
stand to see an innocent child killed or oppressed, so this is a great
choice for characters. The setting is important because it is in one of the
poorest
neighborhoods in the country. Also, the South Bronx is racially
segregated, consisting of mostly blacks and Hispanics. Kozol is able to
use the two together to illustrate the point of view of the residents to the
reader. He offers a new look from a non- white or wealthy point of view.
Kozol gives depth and personality to those victims of society who are
portrayed as a faceless mass by the press and politicians. Many readers
might believe that the poor are lazy and there is nothing that can be done.
They might think it is best to turn their backs to it and let it go away on its
own. Kozol fights this notion and gives each victim a name and a story.
He writes how others viewed the innocent children and how they are
missed. There is one quote from the book in which Kozol cites a priest
from nearby St. Ann s Episcopal Church. He explains how and why the
children remain faithful. He says:
You have to remember, says the priest whom I share my
thoughts about these meetings, that for this little boy whom
you have met, his life is just as important, to him, as your life
is to you. No matter how insufficient or how shabby it may
seem to some, it is the only one he has -an obvious
statement that upsets me deeply nonetheless(Kozol 178).
That one quote sums up Kozol s work in a nutshell. It gives the
reader a deep thought of how each persons life has equal value. Of
course, monetarily all lives are different but simply because one does not
have money or power, it does not mean that their loss is any less
meaningful. The wealthy, white dominated media would have one believe
otherwise and Kozol knows that society is so brainwashed that when most
people hear of a tragedy in a slum they shrug it off and say It was only a
bum. In comparison the tragedy of a wealthy white person would be well
documented, such as the recent John Kennedy Jr. ordeal. It is not to say
that the victims did not deserve a ceremony, but to illustrate how some
lives are perceived to be more valuable than others. In fact, Kozol said in
an interview with Christopher Zimmerman,
Is money really the issue? It s extraordinary-as though it
were strange to suggest that poverty is primarily a matter of
economics. Would we doubt this if we were talking about
people starving in Haiti? or Calcutta? Of course not. We
would say they re poor not because they do not have the right
values, or something of that sort, but because of their
economic condition. Only in the United States, it seems, do
we question whether poverty is caused by lack of money.
There s almost a sense here that we can t conceive the
presence of economic injustice in our own society-only in
other societies. Why should our society be different from any
other society? Of course, spending money is not the only way
to solve the problem of unequal schools, for example but it
would be a beginning(Zimmerman1).
One of Kozol s apparatus to express his vision of the world, is that
through all the tragedies and all of the oppression, he still presents the
reader with characters whom are pure and able to survive. One example
of this is Mrs. Washington, an older woman who has lived in the South
Bronx her whole life and has seen all of the villainy that occurs. She
witnesses the deaths of the children and falls ill herself. She is forced
into an inept hospital, yet remains decent and humane. Mrs. Washington
is a character whose fate underlies the entire story. She is alive from
beginning to end, and sees all of the children who are destroyed by the
inactivity of others. She is a powerful tool in the story because by the
later years of her life, the area is still in the same, if not worse condition
as it was during her childhood. It makes the reader think What have we
really done to help these people and when will we make a significant
difference. Others who survive to go on to college or remain spiritual,
give hope to the reader that one day the city and society will change and
help these people live.
In contrast to all of the evil characters such as the drug dealers,
murderess or city hall, Kozol presents dozens of martyrs who fight the
evils of society. He gives them names and stories to eliminate the
faceless mass that is referred to as the poor. One, Alicia Aponte, a
nineteen year old girl, was killed in a crossfire at a playground. Another,
Lourdes Cintron, was a philanthropist who was killed shortly after taking
over the family business of philanthropy. One more martyr was
Moondog a man who was killed in the doorway of his house while
protecting a pregnant woman. All of these characters are inspirational
despite their tragic deaths. It gives hope that there are still some who are
not corrupted by the evil that is known as society. Toni Morrison also
praises Kozol on his tools. She writes, Amazing Grace is good in the
old-fashioned sense: beautiful and morally worthy….I thank you for the
language of this book, and its refusal to patronize, to exoticize these
children and its insistence upon taking what they say, feel and think
seriously. (Morrison)
Throughout the book Amazing Grace, by Jonathan Kozol, the author
uses many tools that help him convey his vision of the world to the reader.
His choice of children as the main characters is unique because it gives
the reader a character they can relate to as well as sympathize for
because of the innocence a child has. The use of setting could not be a
better tool because of how poor and dirty the city is. It is racially
segregated so the wealthy whites relate little to what happens to the
inhabitants of one of the poorest cities in the nation. The spiritual
overtone that Kozol uses in the book does not necessarily relate to the
religious but more to the morality of humanity. He accuses the world of a
crime that is not written or spoken of, it is the crime of indifference. His
ability to reveal these evils to the world is what makes his book a work of
art. In his epilogue, Kozol chooses a very thought provoking scene. It
deals with politicians and officials giving speeches to the poor in the city
park, preaching an upcoming change. He quotes the officials in saying
You can t control what you were born as, but if you control yourself, our
life will be more peaceful. (Kozol 234) A nice sounding quote but when
one breaks it down it is a different story. Yes they could not control what
they were born as, but that is why segregation is evil. The second part of
the phrase is almost absurd. If you can control yourself, our life will be
more peaceful. It sounds as if the official was blaming the children and
the poor for their violent behavior and asking them to stop so that the
wealthy do not have to deal with these problems. It seems as if the man
has no idea of what actually goes on in these neighborhoods. After
hearing enough of this gathering Kozol is walking away. In a symbolistic
way he exits behind the officials to another block where he sees addicts
and homeless abundant in the street, as if to say it is what is at the back
of the city that is the problem not the front.
Kozol s most touching tool is the reminder that the people who live
there actually do live with grace. He writes about how the oppressed
people still try to live like any other citizen. One character, Mrs. Flowers,
is an older woman who lives in a small rundown apartment. Mrs. Flowers
does not act like she is living in poverty, she cleans her apartment
everyday and keeps it in good condition, given the situation. Kozol had
gone to visit her one time and was surprised at how she acted like an
upper-class hostess, offering tea and food to him. This was surprising
because of her lifetime of poverty and the fact that she had lost her
daughter to AIDS recently. Another character is Mrs. Washington, who
had remained hopeful despite her constant oppression and struggles. She
lived her whole life in poverty and had seen most of the youth in the area
that were killed before they could experience life. These people
amazingly stayed hopeful and did so with grace.
Kozol s tools are what make this book a work of art. His keen sense
of humanity adds to the flavor of this urgent cry for help. The children are
symbols of beauty and innocence that remain pure despite their harsh
surroundings. The city and public that do little to help these people are
committing the worst crime one can commit according to Kozol,
indifference. This story is clearly told to the reader by Kozol, who is a
master at conveying his vision to the reader. One final question arises to
the reader by the end of story, and that is When will things change?