Jonathan Kozol - Amazing Grace: The Lives of Children and the Conscience of a Nation

At a time when Americans are struggling to see through the political, racial, and economic walls that separate them, Jonathan Kozol comes along with a window. Like an Old Testament patriarch, he rages at what he calls the greed and theological evil of our time.

A NITA M ANNING , USA Today

An often stirring and shocking portrait of the dire poverty of these young inner-city lives. A labor of love by a deeply humane man.

L ISA S HEA , Elle

It is powerful stuff: uplifting with its tales of those who survive amid the destruction; depressing because of the many lives that poverty kills, almost literally from the womb.

L EWIS B EALE , New York Daily News

Surely deserving of a Pulitzer.

Philadelphia Daily News

In this stunningly simple and eloquent book, Jonathan Kozol continues to be our voice in the wilderness of Americas childhood.

S USAN C AMPBELL , Hartford Courant

Kozol wants you to step away from the comfortable. He wants you to see the childrens magic and to be so shaken by their lives that you demand change. A well-reported and -crafted book that asks tough questions and hurts you to read.

J UNE A RNEY , Virginian-Pilot

There must be something special about Kozola warmth, a gentleness, a kind of mournful decencythat brings out the extraordinary in others. He knows how to ask questions, to listen patiently, and to treat the answers he gets with a respect that borders on courtliness. Kozol is an important writer, but he is also an important presence.

K AI E RIKSON , The Nation

Jonathans struggle is noble, his appeal urgent. What he says must be heard. His outcry must shake our nation out of its guilty indifference.

E LIE W IESEL

A superb book. I was alternately moved to tears and outrage.

R ABBI D AVID S APERSTEIN

A profound book about New York, painting a portrait of where we really are in our municipal life and reminding all of us, but particularly those of us in government, of how much work we must do if we have any claim to having a moral center.

R UTH M ESSINGER , former Manhattan borough president

Awesome and important.

G WENDOLYN B ROOKS

Amazing! A marvelous achievement!

H ENRY L OUIS G ATES J R .

Jonathan Kozol has been for a generation now a dedicated emissary who dares leave the comfortable world to which he was born and in which he was educated for those other neighborhoods that so many of us, these days, try to put out of our minds. His grace, then, is also amazinghis tenacious insistence that he himself not forget what is morally at stake for all of us in the South Bronx and places like it across the land.

R OBERT C OLES , author of The Moral Life of Children

Kozol reminds us that, with each casualty, part of the beauty of the world is extinguished, because these are 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.

B ARBARA E HRENREICH , author of Nickel and Dimed and Bait and Switch

Amazing Grace is good in the old-fashioned sense: beautiful and morally worthy. I thank you for the language of this book, its refusal to patronize, to exoticize these children, and its insistence upon taking what they say, feel, and think seriously.

T ONI M ORRISON

A beautiful and passionate book about the lives of the people in the South Bronx. By capturing the moral courage, eloquence, and spiritual resilience of his subjects, Jonathan Kozol has created a moving and critical narrative written in the spirit of the gospels, infused with love and steeped in the principles of justice.

P AULO F REIRE , author of Pedagogy of the Oppressed

Very powerfulit may turn out to be one of the books of our times. This is a remarkable book; I encourage all Americans to buy it and read it.

M ARIAN W RIGHT E DELMAN , president, Childrens Defense Fund

The extraordinary thing about Mr. Kozols writing is that Gods presence in poor children comes through as light in the darkness. I believe Amazing Grace to be the finest book of its kind.

R T . R EV . P AUL M OORE , Episcopal Bishop of New York

A compelling and powerful portrait of the tragic harm so many children suffer in urban America. As always, Jonathan Kozols work is taut and elegiac, memorable and haunting.

D AVID J. G ARROW , Pulitzer Prizewinning
author of Bearing the Cross

Also by Jonathan Kozol

FIRE IN THE ASHES

LETTERS TO A YOUNG TEACHER

THE SHAME OF THE NATION

ORDINARY RESURRECTIONS

SAVAGE INEQUALITIES

RACHEL AND HER CHILDREN

ILLITERATE AMERICA

ON BEING A TEACHER

CHILDREN OF THE REVOLUTION

THE NIGHT IS DARK AND I AM FAR FROM HOME

FREE SCHOOLS

DEATH AT AN EARLY AGE

Copyright 1995 by Jonathan Kozol

All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Broadway Paperbacks, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
www.crownpublishing.com

Broadway Paperbacks and its logo, a letter B bisected on the diagonal, are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Crown Publishers, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, in 1995.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kozol, Jonathan.

Amazing grace : the lives of children and the conscience of a nation / Jonathan Kozol.
Originally published: New York : Crown, c1995.
1. Poor childrenNew York (State)New York. 2. Socially handicapped childrenNew York (State)New York. 3. Children of minoritiesNew York (State)New York. 4. Sick childrenNew York (State)New York. 5. Inner citiesNew York (State)New York. 6. Mott Haven (New York, N.Y.)Social conditions. I. Title.
HV885.N5K69 1996
362.7097471dc20 96-16817

eISBN: 978-0-7704-3665-0

Cover design by Darren Haggar
Cover photograph: Harvey Wang

v3.1

This book is dedicated to
the children of Beekman Avenue and
St. Anns Avenue in the South Bronx

And to Celeste, with every blessing

And I saw a new heaven and new

earth, for the first heaven

and the first earth were passed

away. And I heard a great voice

out of heaven saying, Behold ,

I make all things new.

Revelation, 21

This is a slightly revised version of the hardcover printing of this book. Some of the revisions are updated factual corrections. Others are minor changes in interpretation, prompted by some recent conversations with the people I describe. A few are corrections that were made for the initial printing but were not included as a consequence of problems in production. As in the hardcover edition, the names of certain people have been changed and certain identifying information is disguised. The precise locations of some conversations are disguised as well, and some events and discussions of events have been resequenced.