Post 4 of 6. If you are wondering what all this counting is about, you can find an explanation in the first two paragraphs from this post. Today I am reviewing another non-fiction. This one is examining poverty in the United States through individual stories, but also surveys, and studies. While they spotlight a lot of problems, they also offer some solutions, including, at the end of the book, a ten-point action list for individuals to follow. Though a bit more academic than the first two, the writing is easy to follow.
It is not unusual for people in their forties and fifties to look at their own lives, then think back on their childhood, and wonder what their classmates are up to these days. Well, Nicholas D. Kristoff and Sheryl WuDunn did actual research. Mr. Kristoff grew up in a rural area of northwest Oregon state. Like all the other children in his neighborhood, he took the bus to school. He would soon discover a quarter of his classmates on that bus would end up dead from "drugs, suicide, alcohol, obesity, reckless accidents and other pathologies." In one particular family of five, one sibling burned to death, too drunk to notice, and another while making meth; hepatitis, as a result of drug use, killed a third, while excessive drinking and drug abuse caused liver failure in the fourth. The fifth child? Ended up serving thirteen years in prison, has AIDS, hepatitis, and continues to use drugs. He lives with his mother, who at the time of publication was seventy-nine years old, and outlived her abusive husband, who died at age thirty-nine, and four of her children.
The book is full of tragic stories like this one. And sobering statistics. Its chapters undermine any nostalgia of a bygone past in the United States. There is no Leave it to Beaver or Brady Bunch in these accounts. It turns out that The Andy Griffith Show was not a documentary. The book also defies easy explanations for these peoples' fates. The family of five children were born to a mother who dropped out of school after the fifth grade, and a father who could not write his own name, both of whom started out as migrant farmworkers. The two ended up in a town of 50 people in Cove Orchard, Oregon. Managed to buy a house. She would have to work odd jobs while raising the children. He found a union job laying pipe. But he was an abusive drunk, some times chasing his wife and children with a loaded gun, firing at them. Or, he would spend most of his pay in bars. Some of the children showed promise in school, but their behavior, especially the sons, modelled on their dad's drunken rage, turned off teachers and administrators. The system was not designed to help them. Drugs and alcohol, a lack of jobs for unskilled and uneducated young people--by the time the children had reached adulthood, the local manufacturing had left the area--and physical accidents made things worse.
But the book is not all doom and gloom. There are stories of children from that school bus, who grew up poor, struggled in school, found an escape in drugs and alcohol, spent time in prison, yet managed to find their way out of it by the time they turned thirty. Private institutions and government grants played a part. A program to help incarcerated women recover from addiction, find a place to stay, and hold down a job. Another one led by law enforcement, which puts off arresting drug users, and instead steers them towards counselors. Dentists who provide free care in pop-up clinics throughout rural regions. School teachers and administrators who put aside bias and pre-conceived notions, and support struggling students. Yet, these solutions cost money, require time in order to see results, and ask us to be less judgmental. It is easier to fine, incarcerate, and belittle.
There was one particular story that stood out for me. In a time when getting tough on crime is all the rage, it offers counterexample. And, oddly, exemplifies a Christian virtue terribly lacking in our society. One day, a twenty-eight-year-old white housewife was walking out of a restaurant to her car. A group of boys approached her. One of them, a thirteen-year old black kid, pointed a gun at her face, and demanded her purse. Before she could do anything, he pulled the trigger, tearing apart her face. She ran away, and he fired a few more shots, before escaping. She lived, and he was arrested days later, while hanging out in a stolen car. He confessed immediately, without hesitation, something he still doesn't know why he did. At thirteen, he was tried as an adult for attempted murder, and sentenced to life without parole. He would spend the next twenty-six years in prison surrounded by adult men. Six years into his stint, he did something peculiar. It was Christmas Eve, and he had decided to use his one phone call a month to reach to an unlikely person, his victim. She received the call, and he apologized. She forgave him. And thus began the strangest of friendships. Unable to grasp her response, her husband would divorce her.
At the age of forty, he would be released from prison. You will have to read the book to find out what happened after he was set free, and how the victim found a new direction in her life as a result. It is so worth it.
What I appreciated about this story was the role contrition, followed by apology, and reinforced with forgiveness played in bettering the two lives most affected by the crime. Unfortunately, we live in a country that has decided to reject this Christian value, to the detriment of us all.
Looking back on what I have written, I realize I am not doing this book justice. Within its pages are so much more than anecdotal stories. The authors provide facts and figures (something that certain people in this country reject) alongside studies to demonstrate how government policies, economic forces, social expectations, and bad luck conspire against segments of the population, preventing them from achieving happiness and good health. What this book shows is that this struggle is not the exception, but the norm. And it needs to be addressed. While condemnation and punishment have their place, understanding and forgiveness reinforced with positive actions and adequate resources are more important. Unfortunately, in the current political climate, the poor and destitute be damned. After all, the rest of us need to protect our hard earned entitlements.
Coming up...
Armageddon: What the Bible Really Says About the End by Bart D. Ehrman
Previous Reviews in this Series...
The Good Hand: A Memoir of Work, Brotherhood, and Transformation in an American Boomtown by Michael Patrick F. Smith
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