Amazing Grace by Jonathan KozolWhen reading Amazing Grace, one is unable to escape the seemingly endless stories of hardship and pain. The setting behind this gripping story is the South Bronx in New York, with the main focus on the Mott Haven housing project and its surrounding neighborhood. Here, black and Hispanic families try to cope with the disparity around them. Mott Haven is a place where children must be placed in the hallways of the building because playing outside is too risky. The building is filled with rats and cockroaches in summer and lacks heat and drinking water in winter. This image of the “ghetto” is not one of hope, but that of fear. Even the hospitals serving the neighborhoods are dirty and understaffed to provide quality basic care. If clean sheets are needed, patients should put them on themselves. This book is filled with stories of real people and their struggles. Each story, although different in content, has the same basic point, survival. On a tour led by Cliffie (a 7-year-old Kozol met at the local church), the reader can see the neighborhood through the eyes of a child. Cliffie shows the reader a once green park, now dried up and brown with teddy bears hanging from tree branches and children killed in this area. Further down the block, people point to the place where people's bodies are "burned." It turns out it was an incinerator for hazardous waste transported from New York hospitals. No, no bodies, just things like occasional amputated limbs, fetal tissue, needles, soiled bedding, and used bandages are piled up until they can be burned. On days when they burn, the air is heavy and...... middle of paper......he has problems. Problems do not originate in one individual nor stop at another; they constantly reproduce despite different situations. This method only adds to the intensity of the problems. When you close the book or go to sleep at night, the problems don't stop, they continue to grow. Kozol leaves his stories without conclusions. He makes no assumptions or spouts any politically correct rhetoric about how things could be improved. The fact is that there is no easy solution. The problems never end. In the conclusion of his book, he lists the names of everyone who died in the time it took to complete his book. The only conclusion he offers is a list of senseless deaths that never ends. Works Cited: Kozol, Jonathan. Amazing Grace: The Lives of Children and the Conscience of a Nation. New York: Harper, 1996.