Jonathan Kozol's Amazing Grace is a book about the trials and tribulations of everyday life for a group of children who live in the poorest congressional district of the United States, the South Bronx. Their livesmay seem extraordinary to us, but to them, they are just asnormal as everyone else. What is normal? For the childrenof the South Bronx, living with the pollution, the sickness, thedrugs, and the violence is the only way of life many of themhave ever known. In this book, the children speak openly and honestly aboutfeeling 'abandoned', 'hidden' or 'forgotten' by our nation, onethat is blind to their problems. Studying the peoplethemselves would only get us so far in understanding whattheir community is really like and why they feel this way.Jonathan Kozol really got to know the people individually. We can take his knowledge and stories to try for a betterunderstanding of the environment in which they live. Bydoing this, we can explore the many reasons why the peoplehave problems, what some levels of intervention could be,and possibly find somesolutions to making the South Bronx a healthier and saferplace for these children and others to live.Problem Identification The environment in which we study these people can onlybe defined by first taking a look at possible reasons why thepeople have problems. Some of the problems discussed inAmazing Grace have festered throughout the United Statesfor some time now. The high numbers of drug users in thecommunity, the high amounts of gang-related violence, andthe numerous cases of people who have contracted theAIDS virus are just some of the problems that have arisen inthis ghetto. There are many differences between thiscommunity and others in the United States, one of which isthat the government has grouped these people all togetherand made a ghetto of the lowest income families. This hasostracized them from the rest of the nation. It has giventhem many abandonment issues to dea...
