Full Disclosure: Alex Kotlowitz is a good friend.
Alex Kotlowitz’s 1991 New York Times bestseller There Are No Children Here chronicles the lives of Pharaoh and Lafayette Rivers, two young brothers living in the Henry Horner Homes project on the West Side of Chicago. Perceptive, poignant and painful, that groundbreaking book detailed how poverty and violence robbed these boys of their childhoods.
Kotlowitz’s newly published book An American Summer reads like a sequel. In the twenty years after There Are No Children Here, “14,033 people were killed, another roughly 60,000 wounded by gunfire.” These statistics are shocking. Returning to West and South Side neighborhoods, Kotlowitz updates us on residents he first met in the 1980s and introduces us to people connected to the 172 victims of violence in the summer of 2013.
Why has this violence persisted? Kotlowitz makes this observation; “These are young men and women who are burdened by fractured families, by lack of money, by a closing window of opportunity, by a sense that they don’t belong, by a feeling of low self-worth. So when they feel disrespected or violated, they explode, often out of proportion to the moment, because so much other hurt has built up and then the dam bursts. They become flooded with anger.” In a series of stories, we witness this dynamic. When a gang member sees a sign of disrespect, a small disagreement can escalate into murder and mayhem. The inclination to clarify misunderstandings or think through decisions is missing. These troubled African-American and Hispanic communities are like powder kegs of raw emotion.
Why residents of these communities have not turned their anger toward the Chicago power structure that ignores their plight confounds me. Kotlowitz reflects on this: “You grow up in a community with abandoned homes, a jobless rate of over 25 percent, underfunded schools and you stand outside your home, look at the city’s gleaming downtown skyline, and its prosperity, and you know your place in the world.” So instead of demanding respect from those who live in these bastions of privilege, people in this other Chicago demand respect from their local rivals.
Weaving together correspondence and personal interviews, Kotlowitz illuminates the thoughts and feelings of people living in this war zone. He shows the hopes and dreams of parents and the fears and frustrations of siblings and spouses. He also captures the energy, support and sacrifices by teachers and counselors. Many of the young men feel remorse, guilt and doubt about their role in the violence. One young man wants punishment. Another feels he let his family down. One doesn’t want to utter his victim’s name because it will make his crime feel real.
Bail hearings, courtroom trials and prison visits dominate people's lives. Innocent bystanders die in the crossfire and PTSD infiltrates the community. Many kids fear they will die young. Residents of these neighborhoods know not one, but several people who have died from gun violence. The madness continues, in part, because witnesses rarely come forward. In one chapter we learn, “Even though neighbors, family, friends, witnesses and the police are certain who killed Ramaine Hill, there has not been, and may never be an arrest or prosecution.” Retaliation shooting is commonplace for those who do testify.
An American Summer bears witness to the human toll of relentless violence. Like Studs Terkel, Upton Sinclair and Elliot Liebow, Kotlowitz shows us the complexity, humanity and nuances of people’s lives. While he offers no specific solution, he makes evident that poverty, racism, educational inequality, scarcity of jobs and the ubiquity of guns are the root causes of this tragedy. Instead of consciously (or unconsciously) blaming the people growing up in these harsh conditions, we should all be ashamed that our fellow citizens are abandoned to this fate.
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