Fire in the Ashes: Twenty-Five Years Among the Poorest Children in America

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

Fire in the Ashes: Twenty-Five Years Among the Poorest Children in America

4.03 of 5 stars 4.03 · rating details · 385 ratings · 99 reviews

In this powerful and culminating work about a group of inner-city children he has known for many years, Jonathan Kozol returns to the scene of his prize-winning books Rachel and Her Children and Amazing Grace, and to the children he has vividly portrayed, to share with us their fascinating journeys and unexpected victories as they grow into adulthood.

For nearly fifty years...more    In this powerful and culminating work about a group of inner-city children he has known for many years, Jonathan Kozol returns to the scene of his prize-winning books Rachel and Her Children and Amazing Grace, and to the children he has vividly portrayed, to share with us their fascinating journeys and unexpected victories as they grow into adulthood.

   For nearly fifty years Jonathan has pricked the conscience of his readers by laying bare the savage inequalities inflicted upon children for no reason but the accident of being born to poverty within a wealthy nation. A winner of the National Book Award, the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award, and countless other honors, he has persistently crossed the lines of class and race, first as a teacher, then as the author of tender and heart-breaking books about the children he has called “the outcasts of our nation’s ingenuity.” But Jonathan is not a distant and detached reporter. His own life has been radically transformed by the children who have trusted and befriended him.

   Never has this intimate acquaintance with his subjects been more apparent, or more stirring, than in Fire in the Ashes, as Jonathan tells the stories of young men and women who have come of age in one of the most destitute communities of the United States. Some of them never do recover from the battering they undergo in their early years, but many more battle back with fierce and, often, jubilant determination to overcome the formidable obstacles they face. As we watch these glorious children grow into the fullness of a healthy and contributive maturity, they ignite a flame of hope, not only for themselves, but for our society.

   The urgent issues that confront our urban schools – a devastating race-gap, a pathological regime of obsessive testing and drilling students for exams instead of giving them the rich curriculum that excites a love of learning – are interwoven through these stories. Why certain children rise above it all, graduate from high school and do well in college, while others are defeated by the time they enter adolescence, lies at the essence of this work.

   Jonathan Kozol is the author of Death at an Early Age, Savage Inequalities, and other books on children and their education. He has been called “today’s most eloquent spokesman for America’s disenfranchised.” But he believes young people speak most eloquently for themselves; and in this book, so full of the vitality and spontaneity of youth, we hear their testimony.(less)

Hardcover, 368 pages

Published August 28th 2012 by Crown

more details... edit details

Get a copy:

More…

Friend Reviews

To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.

Lists with This Book

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell

Underclass

61st out of 195 books — 64 voters

The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

Your Top 5 Reads in 2012

172nd out of 554 books — 604 voters

More lists with this book...

Community Reviews

(showing 1-30 of 1,481)

filter | sort: default (?) | rating details

Oct 09, 2012 Marcia rated it 3 of 5 stars

Very interesting and eye opening read. It offers a peak into the lives of poor urban families and how it impacts the children coming from the projects. My biggest critique is that Kozol only offers these stories, without giving suggestions for the solution to the problem of getting poor children through the system successfully.

1 like · like · see review

Mar 26, 2013 Krista rated it 5 of 5 stars

I have been reading Mr. Kozols books for the last 13 years. This book is his most poignant yet. The author updates you in order from when he witnessed what went on in some of the homeless shelters in ny in the 80's how children threw no fault of there own were forced to live, and later how some not only overcame there destitution but prospered despite or inspite of inconsiderable odds. This book is about children, a little church that cherished and cared for them and there families, and for the...more

like · see review

Dec 02, 2012 Holly Morrow added it

Jonathan Kozol is an activist on issues surrounding poverty and education in urban America. I first heard of him because my best friend joined Teach for America after being inspired by his book Savage Inequalities. I have not read his earlier books (there are 5 I believe), but think they were more focused on issues surrounding public education – data, policy, etc. This book is more personal; almost a retrospective – he looks back on families he has written about and spent time with over many yea...more
Jonathan Kozol is an activist on issues surrounding poverty and education in urban America. I first heard of him because my best friend joined Teach for America after being inspired by his book Savage Inequalities. I have not read his earlier books (there are 5 I believe), but think they were more focused on issues surrounding public education – data, policy, etc. This book is more personal; almost a retrospective – he looks back on families he has written about and spent time with over many years and talks about how the children have fared. A number of these families he met when they were in an infamous hotel-turned-homeless-shelter called the Martinique in Manhattan – a Lord of the Flies kind of place which might be the worst possible situation in which to raise children (a girl raped in the stairwell, addicts shooting up in the hallway). New York City finally shut the Martinique down, and moved the families to housing projects, mostly in the South Bronx. Kozol follows these families as they make the transition and as the parents struggle to keep their heads above water and shield their children from the influences around them. Single mothers, fathers, and married couples who are trying to do what all parents want to do – raise healthy, happy, contributing adults. The fact that he chooses families headed by relatively high-functioning adults actually makes the stories even more heartbreaking – because even with effort and good intention, the obstacles in front of these children are almost insurmountable, and many of them don’t make it. Many come from bad family situations (e.g. a father in prison); are “educated” in chaotic, failing schools; violence and chronic stresses are everpresent in their peripheral view even if theyre not directly involved; there are virtually no legitimate employment opportunities in their neighborhoods; and a plethora of seductive bad examples beckon them. While Kozol is not preachy (if anything his tone is avuncular), he has occasional flashes of anger not only at the injustice that children are born into these circumstances by no fault of their own, but also that if they fail to overcome them, they are often blamed for it and called lazy, stupid, bad. How do you really say that children who grow up in these circumstances have the same opportunity as, say, me? Ive worked hard in my life, but for me as a young person succeeding meant not pissing away the opportunities that were laid before me (many of which I did!); staying on the right path was a fairly passive endeavor, allowing the current to move me downstream. Succeeding for these kids means constantly, constantly fighting upstream. I can't say its an uplifting read (although Kozol describes many local heroes – a pastor, great teachers, and other mentors), but it’s a good antidote to the stupid, ruthless Ayn Randism that pretends that we all line up equally equipped at the same starting line and its only character and work ethic that determines who wins the race.(less)

like · see review

Oct 23, 2012 Karen rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012

I've been wanting to read Kozol for a long time, but was intimidated for some reason...I think I thought Savage Inequalities might be a dense, academic, footnote-ridden tome that would improve me but not be too enjoyable in the reading. I grabbed Fire in the Ashes as an ARC at ALA last summer, and just pulled it off my shelf in between novels. It's a slightly odd place to start reading Kozol, since it's a retrospective on his lifetime of work and the relationships he's developed over the course...more I've been wanting to read Kozol for a long time, but was intimidated for some reason...I think I thought Savage Inequalities might be a dense, academic, footnote-ridden tome that would improve me but not be too enjoyable in the reading. I grabbed Fire in the Ashes as an ARC at ALA last summer, and just pulled it off my shelf in between novels. It's a slightly odd place to start reading Kozol, since it's a retrospective on his lifetime of work and the relationships he's developed over the course of it--but it's anything but dry and dense.

Kozol comes across in his writing as a deeply thoughtful and sensitive person, someone who sees misery and injustice and doesn't turn away. That's a rare enough trait--but he's also spent his life trying to do something to improve the lives of people he sees suffering, and to change the larger systems that create the conditions of their unhappiness. His Wikipedia article really sums it up. He's a really remarkable person.

In this book, it's also clear that Kozol has shared his own life with the people whose lives he describes--that they know about his own family troubles and worries, and that he sees them socially and enjoys their company. Kozol comes across less as a researcher and more as a community minister, minus the actual religious infrastructure. Which is an awkward way of saying that he shares human relationships with the people he writes about, and that he engages in their lives and tries to help them--and accepts their advice and generosity when they offer it to him in return.

Kozol's writing is relatively formal but never austere. He's scrupulously fair in reporting both the ways that politics and economy unfairly burden poor people, and also the times when they bear some responsibility for their situation. He's compassionate and insightful, but never sentimental or apologistic.

Is this a hopeful book? I'm not sure. Certainly Kozol doesn't finish up by saying that the problems of inner-city poverty and institutionalized racism are all wrapped up. He seems to struggle with a appropriate ending for the book, given that he tells stories of people who have both pulled themselves out of poverty and those who have sunk under its weight. In the end, he lets one of his subjects speak for herself, in her own energetic and optimistic voice. (less)

1 like · like · see review

Oct 15, 2012 Sally rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: education-parenting, social-justice-action

The author looks back on several of the children and adults he has known for many years in the South Bronx, people who are usually denigrated or demonized when not ignored entirely. His gift, as always, is in making plain the full humanity and worth of marginalized people, people who have become his friends but whom he never sentimentalizes. In many ways it is a meditation on what allows some children to escape their poverty-stricken, violent neighborhood, while others self-destruct even when gi...more

1 like · like · see review

Sep 10, 2012 Jay Connor rated it 4 of 5 stars

It takes all the way to the Epilogue to hear Kozol’s message that he has been honing through 25 years of interviews with children of urban poverty: “Charity and chance and narrow selectivity are not the way to educate the children of a genuine democracy.” I agree.

Unfortunately, this comes after of book of revisiting many children he has introduced to us over the past several decades, some with sad and fully expected derailments and others like “Pineapple” and “Jeremy” who have achieved academic...more It takes all the way to the Epilogue to hear Kozol’s message that he has been honing through 25 years of interviews with children of urban poverty: “Charity and chance and narrow selectivity are not the way to educate the children of a genuine democracy.” I agree.

Unfortunately, this comes after of book of revisiting many children he has introduced to us over the past several decades, some with sad and fully expected derailments and others like “Pineapple” and “Jeremy” who have achieved academic breakthroughs despite coming from “neighborhoods of widespread destitution” principally because of charity and chance. By not giving his readers this message frame, this book, as his others, can reinforce a very different and debilitating message.

Jonathan Kozol has been called America’s premier chronicler of life among children of societal neglect. Though we tend to forgive Kozol’s aren’t-I-empathetic style and his I-have-a-relationship-with-these-poor-kids tone, I do believe that his style and tone have contributed to a response to his stories that is at conflict with his central hope: these kids deserve better. (Notice how many failed Colleges of Education he has been invited to address/commiserate with or in how many “post-modern,” navel-gazing Education courses his books are assigned reading).

In fact, I have seen/heard too many use Kozol as a justification that because of their circumstances, we can’t expect as much from these kids. “Developmentally Appropriate” is the guise of denying stimulation/expectation because these kids are so unfortunate. This is in the face of research that shows that these kids are more than capable of succeeding academically without do-gooder props or preference. There is a stronger relationship to their success with our (especially teachers’) expectations than with the children of poverty’s capabilities.

It doesn’t have to be the minority of Kozol’s-kids who succeed. And here is where Kozol is pitch perfect: we should not “celebrate exceptionality of opportunity,” but rather we can achieve transformative outcomes, irrespective of ethnic or economic background, for all children if we “give to every child the feast of learning that is now available to children of the poor only on the basis of careful selectivity or by catching the attention of empathetic people like the pastor of a church or another grown-up who they meet by chance.”
(less)

3 likes · like · see review

Aug 30, 2012 Louise rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: education, social-commentary

In this book you see the tremendous amount of caring, cost and nurturing it takes to help a child who has lived in and around trauma acquire the skills to leave poverty behind. The children profiled in this book have seen family members and neighbors die through violence, drugs and suicide. They have been hungry and bullied by others suffering the same social conditions. They have loyalty to family, guilt for having opportunities. Some waver between confidence and doubt. I would imagine their li...more

1 like · like · see review

Aug 23, 2012 Frishawn Rasheed rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorites, best-of-2012-list-pick, arc-2012

The growing under-class of disenfranchised poor has long been a hidden bruise on the face of America of which few have dared to speak. Fire In the Ashes dares not only to give voice to a few such people, but to allow an entire generation to tell its stories.

This book is a look into the long term effects of poverty, neglect, and social ambivalence on a people, and the ways in which they have overcome or been overcome by their circumstances.

When reading this book it becomes glaringly apparent tha...more

1 like · like · see review

Dec 11, 2012 Jenny GB rated it 3 of 5 stars

Jonathan Kozol takes a look back at the lives of children he has known for years that either successfully pulled themselves out of the hardships surrounding them or succumbed to the forces beyond their control. He provides commentary on people who just could not shake the addictions, anger, and depressions of their life of poverty and failed to overcome it. For some reason, he noted that women have more resilience than men although he doesn't offer an explanation of why. Then he shares the happy...more

1 like · like · see review

Aug 23, 2012 Huma Rashid rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: 21st-century, america, african-american, children, compilation, crime, culture, education, human-rights-abuses, nonfiction, politics, poverty, proletariat

I have been a fan of Jonathan Kozol and his work since I read Savage Inequalities in college, and I was thrilled to be able to review an ARC of his newest book, exploring the intersection of race, poverty, and childhood in the South Bronx, illustrated by children and families near and dear to Kozol's heart.

The book, which is a compilation of about a dozen stories, each one focusing on a different child or family, but framed under the general narrative of the effect of poverty and racism on educ...more I have been a fan of Jonathan Kozol and his work since I read Savage Inequalities in college, and I was thrilled to be able to review an ARC of his newest book, exploring the intersection of race, poverty, and childhood in the South Bronx, illustrated by children and families near and dear to Kozol's heart.

The book, which is a compilation of about a dozen stories, each one focusing on a different child or family, but framed under the general narrative of the effect of poverty and racism on education, is typical of Kozol's style. His writing is clear and at times stark, free of flowery prose, incisive, and utterly effective.

The journey starts out at the Martinique Hotel, a hotel in Midtown that used to house many homeless families before it was shut down in the eighties or nineties as a blight on the affluent City Proper. The early passages reminded me of a story I read in sixth grade that piqued my interest in child poverty in America: Monkey Island by Paula Fox, which made a tremendous impression on me as a child in a small, private school in the Chicago suburbs where I received quite a good education. At the time, I simply couldn't believe that children like Clay Garrity - fictional character that he was - existed in America.

But there are many Clay Garritys in America, and Kozol introduces us to some that he knows quite well. Some of them have prevailed over the incredible odds stacked against them, and some some have not.

Kozol doesn't mince words when he writes about the Martinique. Plagued by drug addicts, criminal activity, vermin, rape, violent and cruel management, and according to one occupant, tension so thick you could cut it with a knife, the Martinique is hell on earth.

He writes of several similar tenements in the city, each with the same problems, used to house the most vulnerable among us, the ones in need of the most care, including many, many children. I cannot adequately describe the horrors there on my own, so I'll simply provide Kozol's words:

I would later spend considerable time in a number of his buildings because so many of the children I was meeting in the Bronx were Mr. Schuster's tenants. There was one building in that complex that I got to know particularly well because I went there several times to interview the family of a child named Bernardo after he'd been killed by falling from an upper floor through an empty elevator shaft. The elevator door wasn't working properly and would open unpredictably even when there was no elevator there. The tenants had complained about the danger many times; but the company refused to make repairs. Bernardo's body landed on the steel roof of the elevator unit, which had stopped four floors beneat his own. He was not found until his blood began to drip on passengers. 

Mr. Schuster managed to clean up his image at a later time by making contributions to important Democratic politicians, some of them strong advocates for the very people he had treated with contempt and whose lives he had imperiled - Hillary Clinton, Richard Gephardt, and John Kerry, among others - or by giving parties to raise funds on their behalf, which won him a degree of prominence in Boston's social pages.

Many of the families that Kozol writes about lived at the Martinique for several years before being given an apartment - which they had to accept no matter what the living conditions there were like - and moving out. The years at the Martinique affected these children tremendously, and early on Kozol notes a pattern when he explains that in two different families that had stayed at the Martinique, the older children had developed such harmful destructive tendencies that they had died very young, while the younger, more resilient (and at the time, more oblivious) siblings managed to pull through and survive.

I won't ruin the narratives by attempting to give a succinct account of them in this review; I would do the stories of those families no justice that way. You simply must read the book itself, and be introduced to the families that way rather than through a casual review.

And Kozol truly does introduce us to some spectacular characters, whose determination, ferocity, and even cheerfulness cause them to leap right off the page. Keep in mind that these characters are Black or Hispanic, with a couple exceptions. The reverend at Saint Anne's, for example, is a white woman named Martha who does her community in the South Bronx an incredible service, and seems to be Kozol's partner, a similar driving force, in this narrative.

But the other characters are overwhelmingly minorities, and the race relations that sulk between the lines of Kozol's text should surprise no one. One woman we meet is Ariella, a mother of two young boys who is determined to give them the best she can, and she knows the key to a better life is a good education.

Kozol writes of her activism efforts,

Projects of this nature, and efforts to reach out to influential and supportive sectors in the mainstream of society, have come to be her dedication. She speaks from time to time at universities and colleges. "I spoke at New York University," she told me recently. "The students wanted to find out how anybody could survive on $16,000 in New York, even twenty years ago!" -- which she said "was not the subject I had planned to speak about."

She holds her own effectively with people in the world of academia. "I don't need a Ph.D. to talk about the things I know. I'm not intimidated by professors when they question me. I can handle their linguistics and gymnastics." When they ask her "how to stop the violence" but, she says, "don't want to hear about the way they put our kids in neighborhoods that are most violent already - you know, 'put them in the fire, then tell them to stop burning' - I don't let them throw that at me. I know what an oxymoron is. I'm not afraid to answer.

That passage made me love Ariella even more. This was a woman who became homeless with her two sons because she refused to stay with an alcoholic husband who beat her. Due to cancer, I believe, she couldn't work and had to apply for welfare when she left her husband. She fought tooth and nail to secure the best for her sons through education, and to help her community, and I loved and envied her strength and her clarity of purpose.

But that passage about her standing up to professors who found it so easy to condescend to her about her experiences - I loved that most of all. That made me want to stand up and cheer. The image of a white professor trying to speak FOR people of color, or for those less advantaged, at the expense of their experiences, to interject with his own and erase their struggles and their experiences, is one I'm quite familiar with, and one that still makes me angry. I was so proud of Ariella for being unwilling to put up with that White Nonsense (TM). (White Nonsense refers to white people using ideas and notions of white supremacy to demonize or erase People of Color, or to erase or diminish their experiences and struggles. It's evil and pervasive and damaging to us all.)

Alice, another strong woman we meet in this book, doesn't let Kozol off the hook with his White Nonsense, either.

She was a politically sophisticated woman. When she came upon a story in one of the papers that offended her intelligence, she would cut it out and write her often pungent comments in the margins. Understatements and omissions in the daily press in stories on the homeless and places like the Martinique stirred up her indignation. The organized abuse of women in the building, she believed, would have made front page headlines in the press if those who were the victims were not overwhelmingly [B]lack and Latino. When I was initially reluctant to agree with her, she grew impatient and she said, "Come on! You know they wouldn't tolerate disgusting things like this for women like your mother or your sister!"

It seems pertinent to mention here, for those who are unfamiliar with the man, that Kozol is Jewish, and a white man. (I do not use the word Caucasian, which is built on notions of Aryan superiority. I say 'white' people.)

I couldn't agree more with Alice's remarks. Not only am I glad she 'grew impatient' and said those things to Kozol, but I'm also glad that he chose to recount those words in his book. That woman is absolutely right. Systemic, organized rape-for-protection of white women would NOT be tolerated, but is ignored and excused (by men who think like Kozol seems to have thought, that the race distinction just isn't there) when it happens to women of color. Because Black/Brown life is cheap, in a way that White life isn't.

I know too well the meaning of those words - men, women and children from the country of my parents' births are dying daily in drone strikes. 90% of the victims of drone strikes in Pakistan are innocent civilians, per the Brookings Institute. White life is precious, Black/Brown life is cheap. This is a reality we face every day, but one that too many white people (seemingly, Kozol at one point included) ignore or try to ignore.

When Alice would chide Kozol for his impatience with his mother's impatience with his near-senile father, she would remind him that his mother was elderly and they didn't have much time together, and he'd hate himself every time he remembered something unkind he said to her. Kozol writes,

Friends can give advice like this, intending well but doing harm. Sometimes they don't realize that the kinds of words they use, and the tone that they assume, can be crippling to you; sometimes perhaps they do. Alice was different in this sense. She understood a lot about fragility in people that she cared for. Even when she grew impatient with mistakes she thought her friends were making, she never showed the slightest wish to demonstrate her competence at the cost of someone else's self-respect. This was one of the qualities in Alice for which, in time, I came to be the most grateful.

Alice had quite a sense of humor, too. When commenting on a club employee's strike because they suddenly weren't being paid extra, like they used to, for cleaning the blood/vomit/excrement of party-goers at the Harvard Club on 44th in Manhattan, she said,

"If people who went to Harvard can't control themselves and drink too much," she said, "I think they ought to be grown up enough to clean up their own vomit."

She often spoke as if she was convinced that a persistent self-indulgent immaturity was one of the entitlements of privilege. She noted, for example, when erotic misbehavior by the very rich was granted absolution by the press that would not be given to the men and women in her neighborhood.

"Another millionaire who didn't bother to get married had another baby," she reported to me once in speaking of a well-known real estate tycoon. "I notice that they never say rich children are born 'out of wedlock.' They never say these babies are 'one parent children.' If you're rich, you don't get judged the way poor people do."

In more ways than one. I'm reminded of a political cartoon I see make the rounds every now and then - the gist being that if you're poor and found with drugs, you go to jail; if you're rich and found with drugs, you go to rehab.

Another story from Alice struck me as especially poignant:

Once, on a steamy Sunday afternoon, she showed me a story in the New York Times that said the heat had been especially uncomfortable for the carriage horses, which are popular with tourists in the midtown area. "It wasn't much of a week to be a horse . . .," the paper said. "People, at least, have air-conditioning and friends with pools."

Her reaction to the glibness of this sentence was less bitter than resigned. "I guess that puts me with the horses," she said quietly."

I found this book problematic because in several places - like where he disagreed with Alice about rape being more easily tolerated when WOC were victimized - Kozol showed his own naivete and the unique ignorance that comes with being a white person in regards to race relations (and I'm sure we can agree that when it comes to racial relations, Kozol is no slouch - that's why it's important to highlight that even if a white person really educates himself/herself in these matters, he or she will make mistakes).

He speaks to a young Latina about Barack Obama being president, and probes about us edging closer to a post racial world because of him. Most of my fellow POC, that I know, would laugh themselves hoarse upon hearing this post racial White Nonsense.

"Now we have a president-" but she cut me off- "who," she said, knowing right away where I must be heading, "happens to be [B]lack."

"Doesn't that mean something might be going on?" Something in that "attitude of white superiority [that must be attacked]" she had just described?

"Not really," she replied.

"You don't think it means we're getting closer to a point where we can start to find solutions to at least a couple of the problems you described?" [Huma here: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.]

"Nope," she said. "Because that's not the reason we elected him. And if he did the things he should, a lot of people who elected him, from what I understand, wouldn't be behind him anymore. A lot of people aren't behind him even now, and he hasn't done a thing that I can see that will make a difference to poor children and the schools we have to go to and the places where they almost always put us, you know, in the neighborhoods, not just in New York . . ."

Once she got her teeth into a big and meaty chunk of obvious injustice she'd experienced first hand, Pineapple clearly wasn't going to hold back. "President Obama didn't have to go to inner-city schools. You know? Where everyone is poor? And everyone's Hispanic or everybody's [B]lack? Why does he think it's good enough for other kids, like children in the Bronx?"

This girl gets it. I'm glad she explained it to Kozol. "Post raciality" is a concept White (TM) people love. I use "White (TM)" to mean those people, who happen to be white, who diminish the effects of racism and/or think it is something that can be solved as if it were a simple problem, and not a pervasive social, political, cultural force that has persisted, violently, over centuries. White (TM) people love 'post racial' shit. They're the ones that say things like, "I see no color, we're all the human race!" That statement, of course, does nothing but diminish/erase the harmful effects of racism that POC suffer *daily.* It is not a helpful statement. No POC wants to hear that White Nonsense (TM). (Again, this does not refer to ALL white people. This refers to the douchebags who actually think this way.)

I loved that Kozol chose to write about these little anecdotes in which POC schooled him, however gently, on the vast differences between the reality of a white man and a POC. (Person of Color, if you haven't picked up on the lingo yet.)

Kozol's stories about these children and families he cares for deeply end with the story of his godson, a story I particularly recommend to readers. He saves it for the end, he says, because it's the hardest to write.

Toward the end of the book, Kozol draws us out of the small world he created for us in the South Bronx, and forces us to confront the larger picture, especially in terms of our rhetoric.

THe word "accountability" is very much in fashion now. Children in the inner cities, we are told, must be "held accountable" for their success or failure. But none of these children can be held accountable for choosing where they had been born or where they led their childhood. Nor can they be blamed for the historic failings of their schools. Nor, of course, are any of these children responsible in any way at all for the massive unemployment, and the flight of businesses and industries, that have put so many young men on corners of the streets with no useful purposes within their daily lives. ("Visitors," Martha told me at the time of the recession in 2001, "are asking if the economic crisis has taken a high toll on people in our parish. I tell them that we've always been in a depression in Mott Haven, so it's hard to see a difference.")

This, of course, would be an excellent launch into a discussion of the GOP platform of seeking to ban abortion, even in the case of rape (per the 2012 platform), and then seeking to privatize (gut) Medicare and Social Security and all sorts of other programs for the poor. It would be quite pertinent to point out that the GOP doesn't give a shit about children unless they're unborn, in which case the GOP will fight to the death for those children to be born ... while Mitt Romney quietly makes a profit off aborted fetuses through Bain Capital. (Look up the Stericycle deal.)

But I'm not going to go into that. (Any more than I already did.)

The epilogue strikes the perfect note of weariness and optimism and, above all else, persistence and resilience.

Kozol is talking to Pineapple (a pseudonym for one of the girls in his book) about his work.

I explained that I was simply having trouble finishing my book. I said I wasn't sure how much had changed back in the neighborhood where she and I had met, but I told her I kept going back and forth on this, because I didn't want to end up on a dreary note.

"Jonathan," she said, "I want you to think positive. Lara and I are going to go back and help to change things once we both have our degrees. You know? Make little changes that we can? If lots of people do that, then the changes won't be little anymore."

I said, "I'm going to steal those words."

"Do it!" she said." And she asked if I remembered something that I told her once when we were walking by the water near her parents' home. "You know? Picking battles that we have a chance to win? And not getting frozen up and flustered in your mind by things that are too big for you and me to change, not at least for now. Which isn't any use to anyone at all."

I said, "I think I'll steal those words as well."

"Do it!" she said a second time. "You're the one who said that to me anyway. I'll give it back to you for free."

A riveting, compelling story, clearly written and effectively told. Don't ever expect anything less from Jonathan Kozol.

Note: Kozol mentions a discretionary fund, comprised of donations from readers, that he uses to help the children in this book and many others with things they need. Sometimes this is for health insurance when a child develops a serious illness and needs to wait a semester before going back on a college's health plan. Sometimes it's for food. Sometimes it's for clothes that actually fit. If you'd like to learn more about the fund or help sustain it, contact the Education Action Fund, 16 Lowell Street, Cambridge MA 02138, or email EdActInc@gmail.com.(less)

2 likes · like · see review

Sep 02, 2012 Deb (Readerbuzz) Nance rated it 4 of 5 stars

Jonathan Kozol breaks my heart every time I open one of his books. Who knew the suffering children are experiencing in homes in the poorest areas of our country? Who knew how schools, the last hope of many, are giving up on these children? Who knew?

Kozol revisits children he has run across in his work in the schools in the past forty years. For many of these children, life has only gotten more difficult and many of these stories end tragically, with prison time and even in death.

But there are h...more

2 likes · like · see review

Aug 25, 2012 Kelly Hager rated it 5 of 5 stars

I first read Jonathan Kozol when I was in college. I minored in sociology and in one of my classes, we read his book Savage Inequalities, which is about the worst school systems in the country. I don't necessarily mean "worst" in terms of students there or teachers and staff. These schools were basically in the poorest sections of various towns. The one that stuck with me in the almost 10 years since I took the class is the one where the roof was in such bad shape that there would be a waterfall...more

1 like · like · see review

Apr 25, 2013 Mikey B. rated it 5 of 5 stars

Recommended to Mikey B. by: Sera

This is truly an inspirational book which confirms, that by helping one, this can radiate to many; having a long term beneficial effect for all.

We follow the lives of a few people from the Bronx in New York City. Some overcome the poverty, the poor education, and the crime and drug culture to rise up and above. We also see some, who sadly, do not make it. They are the victims of both themselves and their harsh living environment. In this predatory environment it is easy for the government to avo...more

2 likes · like · see review

Mar 02, 2013 Tanya rated it 4 of 5 stars

I guess I'm going to have to devise a rating system for nonfictions since my current system doesn't work.

This book was phenomenal. As someone who has lived over seas and seen first hand the squalor and horrors of being poor in a third world country yet has only been exposed to suburban middle class America this book was shocking and a true wake up call. I just kept saying to myself this cannot be happening in AMERICA! In MY life time.

Kozol is a great story teller and you feel the connection he...more

like · see review

Oct 15, 2012 Edward Sullivan rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: adult-nonfiction, education

This book will be most appreciated by readers familiar with Kozol's other works, particularly titles relating to the children and families he has come to know at St. Ann's. Twenty-five years after beginning to follow the lives of these impoverished children, the author offers updated findings. He concludes that the children who have done well as adults have had something special: someone who intervened in their lives. Powerful and moving.

2 likes · like · see review

Sep 07, 2012 Kelly Robinson rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction

I first read Kozol’s work Amazing Grace as a college prerequisite. Amazingly, despite much consternation over having to read something so depressing over summer break, I came to see the importance of his heartbreaking chronicles of the poor and disenfranchised living in the South Bronx. While Savage Inequalities remains my favorite Kozol work, one which prompted me to a career in education, I never stopped wondering about the people in Mott Haven that I learned about in Kozol’s Amazing Grace. No...more

1 like · like · see review

Aug 30, 2012 Amanda rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: arc, nonfiction-social-justice, standalone

True equality means equal opportunities and safety for all, and a book like this is a bit unique in that it doesn’t just look at inequalities but also examines the long-term effects of attempts at intervening and helping people who basically got the short end of the stick. Kozol succeeds quite well in analyzing what has worked and what hasn’t in the Bronx where a large part of his social justice career has been.

The chapters each focus on a different child, although a couple of children get their...more True equality means equal opportunities and safety for all, and a book like this is a bit unique in that it doesn’t just look at inequalities but also examines the long-term effects of attempts at intervening and helping people who basically got the short end of the stick. Kozol succeeds quite well in analyzing what has worked and what hasn’t in the Bronx where a large part of his social justice career has been.

The chapters each focus on a different child, although a couple of children get their own chapters. Kozol met the children either in one of the infamous 1980s NYC homeless shelters or at an after-school tutoring program offered at a church (St Ann’s) in the Bronx. There are a few things that are immediately apparent from observing the long-term trajectory of these kids, which is why a book like this is so valuable for social justice work.

First, all of the kids who were homeless or who spent a long time in homeless shelters had many more problems and difficulties later in life. It is clear that homelessness has a long-lasting negative impact on children, no matter how many good opportunities come to them later in life. Similarly, girls seem to stand a better chance than boys of climbing out of the poverty they grew up in. Kozol never makes any clear speculative statements as to why he thinks this is, but the multiple lives we observe clearly demonstrate that boys are more targeted than girls both by the crime lords and by the police.

The other big theme of the book is of course how educational inequality entrenches classism and racism. Kozol has spent most of his career working in improving education so it’s not surprising this is a theme of the book. One thing that stood out to me was how quickly kids are lost if they never get a firmly established literacy and sense of confidence in their ability to learn. Once kids start getting held back a grade or fall below grade level, it is incredibly easy to become discouraged and turn to what appears to be an easier life of crime.

Kozol ends the book by talking about what he sees as progress and how the now grown-up kids he worked with see possible solutions. He’s adamant that even small gains are gains. He views any child whose life ultimately is one of peace and self-worth as an accomplishment, whether they even completed high school or not. To a certain extent I agree with him, but to a certain extent I agree much more with one of the grown-up kids (who just so happens to be about my age) who argues that small changes aren’t good enough. That the inequality is so deeply entrenched that we must truly rock the system and not just save one child at a time. She does ultimately agree that the small changes are still worthy of praise and is working on a degree in sociology so she may go back to the Bronx and focus in on small changes. That then is the question at the heart of this book and one for which there are no easy answers. How do we fix this problem?

It’s difficult to say who this book will appeal to. It’s not a clear treatise on the educational system or social justice. It is one man’s observations of the lives and life stories of inner city youth he worked with. It is not academic per se but it’s also not exactly a memoir either. I think perhaps that it will appeal most to anyone whose day to day job involves having small influences on the education of individuals. It clearly shows how much impact one person can have on another person’s life, particularly when it comes to education and literacy.

Overall then I recommend this to those who work in education whether formally or informally. It is encouraging to see the perspective of an older person who has clearly seen how his life work has impacted the kids he worked with.

Check out my full review.(less)

2 likes · like · see review

Dec 03, 2012 Erika Palmquist Smith rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012

Anyone who has read Kozol's previous books, including "Amazing Grace" and "Savage Inequalities," will enjoy this update on some of his most colorful characters. I don't know how well this book stands on its own without the context of his past writings, and it doesn't make a "point" until almost the end of the book (whereas his previous books have woven critiques of the public school, welfare, and health care systems in with the poignant portraits of those he encounters).

That said, the book is a...more

like · see review

Sep 05, 2012 Valentina rated it 4 of 5 stars

This was a fascinating account of disfranchised kids living in one of the poorest neighborhoods in the United States. It is a heartbreaking and eye-opening view of the lives that are affected by the lack of care the government provides them.
The author first met most of these children twenty-five years ago, and he begins his accounts at the moment of the first meeting, continuing on until adulthood. He focuses first on the children who weren’t able to succeed, to get past the deficiencies they ha...more

2 likes · like · see review

Oct 21, 2012 Susan Cox rated it 3 of 5 stars

I appreciated the detail that Kozol goes into in describing the lives of the young people he has known. The book enlarged the scope of my imagination as an educated, middle-to-upper class woman. The relationships that he has developed with young people and their families inspire this teacher-librarian to get her hands dirty in caring for others. I did like the book, but I have to give it three stars for its writing style. Kozol's style tends to be somewhat self-conscious, and this self-conscious...more

like · see review

Oct 14, 2012 shaz rasul rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012

I've seen Kozol speak some of the stories in "Fire in the Ashes" so it's not just the book I'm commenting on. In short, I think "Fire…" does well to remind us of the complexity, the messy human complexity, that is the life of a child, of a family, that is struggling to overcome poverty. To my mind, his stories, touch upon the intergenerational nature of it all, and whether intentionally or not, challenge this idea that one can take something less than a comprehensive approach to the life of a ch...more

like · see review

Sep 15, 2012 Dan Schiff rated it 4 of 5 stars

Another reviewer picked up on the same passage near the end of the book that I wanted to highlight: "Charity and chance and narrow selectivity are not the way to educate the children of a genuine democracy."

Anyone who would dare to paint the poorest Americans with a broad brush -- as lulled into complacency and laziness by the welfare system, for example -- needs to read Kozol's books. There are children in Fire in the Ashes who make it out of the South Bronx and go to college, and there are oth...more

1 like · like · see review

Jan 26, 2013 Kristine rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction

Fire in the Ashes: Twenty-Five Years Among the Poorest Children in America is so very, very, very readable. That was my biggest surprise.

I have long been aware of, yet never have read any of Kozol's previous books, so I can't really make any comparisons. However, this non-fiction work with a long-term case study approach of individual children (and families) grappling with urban poverty and its impacts also contains a clear and obvious presence of the author himself. We witness Kozol interacting...more

like · see review

Jan 28, 2013 Loren rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: u-s-history, sociology

Kozol single handedly opened my perspective into the lack of civility in our civilized society during my formative years. I owe a large debt to him and people like him for their work to progress our system towards a true democracy rather than the illusion of one.

That said.

When I took the time to share this novel with my father in law on a long car ride through audiobook, he could barely hold back his contempt.
"Yeah, but does he give any solutions?" He stated gruffly.

And that's my fear. This bo...more

like · see review

Jul 10, 2012 Toni rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012, sociology

I'm something of a sociology buff. I enjoy hearing about other people's lives, journeys, struggles, etc., without being bombarded with statistics and studies. Jonathan Kozol is a great chronicler of the lives of impoverished children as evidenced in his bestselling book, Savage Inequalities.

Kozol spent time in a neighborhood in the Bronx, known to be one of the poorest urban areas in the country. He came to know several families, most who were relocated there after the closing of several "hotels...more

3 likes · like · see review

Aug 19, 2012 Linda Cohen rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012, arc, non-fiction

This book made me angry and yet sad at the same time. I feel like we are leaving whole segments of our country behind and it feels as though we are doing it deliberately. These people don't matter because they are brown and black or ethnic and are not somehow deserving of the same benefits as the whites that live in areas just around the corner from the areas the children in this book lived. The schools are awful, the housing substandard and yet HUD does nothing. Society looks down on people who...more

1 like · like · see review

Apr 03, 2013 Susan Olesen rated it 3 of 5 stars

Nothing really new here, just a series of case histories on children growing up in the South Bronx, one of the poorest places in the entire country, and the challenges they face in life and school. Some of them make it out, with help from adults who care; others do not. Once again, Kozol shows in simplest terms why blaming the poor for poverty helps no one, that how we treat the poor only compounds the problems, and that not everyone who winds up homeless is to blame (ie, displaced due to fire,...more

like · see review

Feb 06, 2013 Peggy rated it 5 of 5 stars

Why are academics liberal? Maybe because we read books like this. I dare anyone to read it and walk away thinking that children from neighborhoods like the one described here in the South Bronx just need to try harder to succeed at school and enter the U.S. economy seamlessly. I'd like to add that my jaw dropped at the description of the Rev. Martha Overall, Episcopal priest at St. Anne's, whose generosity, ferocity, attention, and love provided one of the few bright spots in the lives of many o...more

1 like · like · see review

Jan 06, 2013 Sera rated it 4 of 5 stars

Recommended to Sera by: Book Page

Shelves: audio, library, non-fiction

Overall, a very interesting look on how the poor in America are unable to get a solid education. Kozol introduces us to a number of children who grew up in a part of the Bronx, NY, which is considered the poorest community in the US, and does a nice job telling their stories.

The important things that I learned from this book (in no particular order) are: (1) success is relative and needs to celebrated as such; (2) the kids who "make it" are the exception rather than the norm, and each one had s...more

3 likes · like · see review

Jan 16, 2013 Rachael rated it 4 of 5 stars

"...charity has never been a substitute, not in any amplitude, for systematic justice and systematic equity in public education. ...public schools themselves in neighborhoods of widespread destitution ought to have the rich resources, small classes, and well-prepared and well-rewarded teachers that would enable us to give to every child the feast of learning that is now available to children of the poor only on the basis of a careful selectivity or by catching the attention of empathetic people...more

like · see review

« previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 … 49 50 next »

new topic
Discuss This Book

topics	posts	views	last activity
my very own book review site, please comment on blog, not goodreads.	1	3	Feb 11, 2013 02:16pm
Read It Forward: * FIRE IN THE ASHES by Jonothan Kozol	5	16	Oct 15, 2012 12:59pm
Book Giveaways: Fire in the Ashes - superb new nonfiction	1	5	Aug 30, 2012 08:55am
Book Giveaways: Win Fire in the Ashes	1	12	Aug 30, 2012 08:47am

combine
Other Editions (6)

More editions...

Genres

Non Fiction

45 users

Education

22 users

Sociology

7 users

Social Issues > Poverty

5 users

Social Movements > Social Justice

4 users

Politics

4 users

Culture > Society

3 users

History

3 users

Social Issues

3 users

Economics

3 users

See top shelves...

Readers also enjoyed similar books

About Jonathan Kozol

Jonathan Kozol is a non-fiction writer, educator, and activist best known for his work towards reforming American public schools. Upon graduating from Harvard, he received a Rhodes scholarship. After returning to the United States, Kozol became a teacher in the Boston Public Schools, until he was fired for teaching a Langston Hughes poem. Kozol has held two Guggenheim Fellowships, has twice been a...more

More about Jonathan Kozol...

Books by Jonathan Kozol

Savage Inequalities: Children in America's Schools

Amazing Grace: The Lives of Children and the Conscience of a Nation

The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America

Ordinary Resurrections: Children in the Years of Hope

More…

Share This Book

Facebook Twitter Your website

Trivia About Fire in the Ashes...

No trivia or quizzes yet. Add some now »

title link	preview: Fire in the Ashes: Twenty-Five Years Among the Poorest Children in America
avg rating	preview: Fire in the Ashes: Twenty-Five Years Among the Poorest Children in America Goodreads rating: 4.03 (385 ratings)
small image	preview: click here [close]
med image	preview: click here [close]
BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13330423-fire-in-the-ashes?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1344956292l/13330423.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13330423-fire-in-the-ashes?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]Fire in the Ashes: Twenty-Five Years Among the Poorest Children in America by Jonathan Kozol[/url]

Fire in the Ashes: Twenty-Five Years Among the Poorest Children in America

Friend Reviews

Community Reviews

Share This Book

Share This Book on Your Website