Life in the Henry Horner Homes - 902 Words

Life in the Henry Horner Homes can be everything but present. Life in the city of Chicago can seem more like a curse than a gift. The residents of this public housing only experience brief instance of true joy before the reality that is their lives come crushing back down on them. There Are No Children Here shows first hand experience of the hardship of Americans and the wreckage, that is urban life. Throughout the story we focus on two major characters; 10 year old LaFayette, and 7 year old Pharoah, as they struggle to beat the odds against them and the struggles of growing up in one of Chicagos worst housing projects. Living in a family that is not strong financially adds to the many stressful problems that the boys must face daily. Their mother is depends solely on welfare, a father who abuses alcohol and drugs, an older sister, older brother and younger triplets. Alex Kotlowitz describes the horrendous conditions of the poorly-maintained housing project completely taken over by g angs, where murders and shootings happen daily, where you guard must always be up in order to survive. The book tracks Pharoah and LaFayette over a two year period which touches on all of the struggles they deal with in school, mourning the deaths of close friends, resisting the temptations of gangs and still find enough courage to find that quiet, inner peace, that most outside this life for granted. Alex Kotlowitz has a magnificent way of portraying â€Å"ghetto life†; those who are outside theShow MoreRelatedAnalysis Of The Story Of Men And Women Under Pressure By And There Are No Children Here1292 Words   |  6 Pagesto day life without restraint or interference from someone of a higher power. Shantung Compound: The Story of Men and Women Under Pressure by Langdon Gilkey and There Are No Children Here: The Story of Two Boys Growing Up in the Other America by Alex Kotlowitz both explore the idea of what it means to be free. More specifically, Gilkey explores what it mea ns to temporarily lose freedom in the Weihsien Camp while Kotlowitz explores what it means to never have freedom in the Henry Horner Homes. ThroughRead More There Are No Children Here Essay978 Words   |  4 Pagesout their clothes, to how they wash them. We go to school with them and we play with them. Throughout the book, we are much like flies on the wall. We see and feel everything the boys go through at Henry Horner Homes, the project where they live. LaJoe moved into the Henry Horner Homes in 1956 with her mother and father. Back then it was a beautiful place. There was a green, grass baseball diamond, which was regularly mowed. For the children there was a playground with swings and jungleRead More The Effect of Gangs in There Are No Children Here Essay949 Words   |  4 Pagespowerful tension always lurks in the background. The gangs that are rampant in the housing projects of Chicago cause this tension. In the Henry Horner Homes, according to Kotlowitz, one person is beaten, shot, or stabbed due to gangs every three days. In one week during the authors study of the projects, police confiscated 22 guns and 330 grams of cocaine in Horner alone (Kotlowitz 32).    For the children of the projects, the pressure to join a gang never waivers. Quick cash and protectionRead MoreWilliam Shakespeare s Lord Of The Flies1379 Words   |  6 PagesHenry enters the court with his different rulers. Suffolk has come back from France with Margaret, whom he shows to the lord as his new wife. He additionally brings a peace giveaway from France, which Gloucester peruses. He flounders when he goes to an entry about the French keeping the regions of Anjou and Maine consequently for Margaret. Gloucester is disturbed with this loss of area, once hard-won by Henry V and by alternate rulers in late French wars. He estimates the up and coming loss of FranceRead MoreThere Are No Children Here - Book Review1651 Words   |  7 Pagesfight for survival in inner-city Chicago circa 1987. The boys are living in an apartment at the Henry Horner housing complex with their mother, LaJoe, their younger brother and sisters – the triplets, and a constant stream of people from their father Paul to their sister’s boyfriend’s brother staying on and off with them. Henry Horner is a housing project in inner-city Chicago. Between Henry Horner and a neighboring complex, 60,110 people resided here, 88 percent black, 46 percent below povertyRead MoreEssay about Finding Strength in Poverty in There Are No Children Here1204 Words   |  5 Pagespeople experience in an entire lifetime. That is what being privileged is. When I started reading this book, I thought that is was going to be another poor me story about some poor black kids who got a raw deal. That was my ignorant, privileged life rearing its head. When I forged ahead, and read the book, I did so in seek of a grade, not a new perspective. I got to the fifth page, and I felt guilty. The guilt again was a selfish one, for I had been fooled to believe that the poor were poor becauseRead MoreAnalysis Of Alex Kotlowitz s There Are No Children Here1695 Words   |  7 PagesAlex Kotlowitz’s There Are No Children Here is a documentary exploring life in inner-city Chicago during the late 1980’s. The book follows the lives of two African American youth, Lafeyette and Pharoah Rivers, who live in Chicago’s Horner Homes over the course of two years. It tells of a lifestyle that is a reality for many Americans and forces the reader to acknowledge a broken system that so many turn a blind eye toward. Kotlowitz does not sugarcoat th e struggles and hardships that the citizensRead MoreEssay about There Are No Children Here - If I Grow Up1241 Words   |  5 Pagesgrief, trying to survive from day to day in their appartment at the crime-ridden Henry Horner Homes housing project on the outskirts of Chicago. When Kotlowitz approached the boys mother, LaJoe, about writing the book about her children, she agreed with him, but felt the need to set him straight. But you know, there are no chlidren here. Theyve seen too much to be children, LaJoe told Kotlowitz. Lajoe moved to Horner when she was a young girl with her family of thirteen. The family had been livingRead MoreRacial Segregation Of Chicago And Explosive Gang Related Crime1671 Words   |  7 Pagesthe history of police brutality. The Henry Horner apartments were Projects in Chicago that had consistent gang violence during the 1960’s. In There Are No Children Here: The Story of Two Boys Growing Up in The Other America by Alex Kotlowitz he discusses how, â€Å"the antipathy of Henry Horner residents toward the police crystallized a year later, in 1969, when four young men were killed by the authorities. Their deaths forever changed the way people at Henry Horner viewed the police† (Kotlowitz 162)Read More There are no Children Here Essay1736 Words   |  7 Pagesnbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;Alex Kotlowitz’s book, There are No Children Here, is a story about two boys, Pharoah and Lafeyette Rivers growing in the late 1980’s in Henry Horner, a housing project in Chicago. The boys try to retain their youth while they see constant gang violence, death of close friends, their brother in jail and their dad struggling with a drug addiction. In Horner, there are two gangs that claim it as their turf, and the Rivers family is constantly ducking from shots of gunfire there. They live in an