Amazing Grace

Talking Points # 1
Jonathan Kozol: Amazing Grace

This article was extremely easy to read. I read it with no problem, understanding all of the concepts that the author was trying to portray. It was an article that really went along the lines in the environment that I grew up around. We do not have to go all the way to New York to see that poverty and see the poor. Growing up in Providence I saw first hand the life of those living in poverty. I know what it is like growing up in a house that does not have enough money for heat in the winter or an air conditioner on sticky summer days. I can only speak from my own experience. I can relate to the author when she speaks about kids receiving free lunches. My mother left my Father when I was about 4 years old, because my father was an alcoholic, drug addict and a drug dealer. My Mother was a strong woman and still remains strong and healthy thanks to God. She took my 3 sisters and me under her own wings, it was a hard childhood but it really was a humbling experience because we do not take anything for granted now. For example, we could not afford new beds so what we did on trash day we would go around and see if there were things that we could take out of the trash and put them to some kind of use. My bed was made out of wood that we found in the garbage, some of our toys we found in the trash. It was nothing we could do about our circumstance, and coming from an immigrant mother made things even harder because state help did not come so easy. It was hard reading this article because it crazy how we can let such things happen in our own country, its like if were just ignoring them so they can just die. It seems that everybody things that these people are in these positions because they want to, but to think like that is really closed minded. The kids being born that already have contracted AIDS/HIV did not ask to be born into those circumstances. As a society we tend to give less importance to those who the medical help. We rather make sure that a person fighting a common cold gets a bed than a person that is fighting cancer does. It feels like if all were doing is alienating and pushing all of the people living in poverty off until they all die. It’s already growing up in poverty, let alone feel like everybody in the world is against you because you do not see a person sticking out a hand to help. The only hands open are those of the drug dealers on the corners. I grew up right down the street from Chad Brown projects in Providence. I would sometimes have to pass threw there in order to get home and I would always be asked the same question like in the article “what do you want?”. I was to young to understand what they meant but when I would tell my mom she would explain to me that what they were offering we was nothing good. As I grew older I was able to see first hand the drug exchanges go down, even witnessed some of my childhood friend get into drugs and lose them to addictions and overdoses. Like I said earlier, growing in poverty is not something I feel good talking about and expressing but showing others that there is an exception. That you can be another success story, in which a kid that made it out of the “ghetto” and overcame all obstacles, went on and became someone in this society not fit for him/her.