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

by Jonathan Kozol Narrated by Keythe Farley

Overview

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.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

National Book Award–winner Kozol (The Shame of the Nation) again traces the workings of “savage inequalities”—this time on a generational timescale—in this engrossing chronicle of lives blighted and redeemed. He follows the fortunes of people he met decades ago in a squalid Manhattan welfare hotel and in the South Bronx’s Mott Haven ghetto, whose stories range from heartbreaking to hopeful: traumatized boys grow into lost and vicious men; teens go to college and beyond with the help of mentors; many drift through years of addiction, violent relationships, and prison before achieving a semblance of stability and focus. These lives are full of choices, good and spectacularly bad, but Kozol highlights the institutional forces that shape them: social service bureaucracies that warehouse the homeless in hellholes; immigration regulations that break up families; the academic “killing fields” of the Bronx’s terrible middle schools; the neighborhood church whose ministries rescue many kids. Eschewing social science jargon and deploying extraordinary powers of observation and empathy, Kozol crafts dense, novelistic character studies that reveal the interplay between individual personality and the chaos of impoverished circumstances. Like a latter-day Dickens (but without the melodrama), he gives us another powerful indictment of America’s treatment of the poor. Agent: Lynn Nesbit, Janklow & Nesbit Associates. (Aug.)

From the Publisher

A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of 2012
A Booklist 2012 Editor’s Choice Selection

“Kozol’s storytelling gifts shine through: with simple anecdotes that show the soulful humor, compassion, and wisdom that kindles progress among the survivors.” —Christian Science Monitor

“Fire in the Ashes isn’t some saccharine account of how disadvantaged youth get a break and then triumph over adversity.  Instead, Kozol shows us the very real costs of putting children in bad schools….Throughout, Kozol connects with these kids and young adults on a human level, refusing to step on to some political soapbox.” —Boston Globe

“As I read Fire in the Ashes and thought about Kozol's admirably principled commitment to chronicling the lives of the urban poor, I marveled at his staying power.  His tone, too, has been consistent for almost 50 years – cool, smart, empathetic and, despite all the evidence to rebut his convictions, full of hope….Kozol's brilliant body of work shines a light not merely on the lives of the poor, but also into the dark night of the American soul.” —Portland Oregonian

“Check out this magnificent book, because I think you’ll like it.  For anyone [who] cares about his fellow human, Fire in the Ashes burns bright.” —Savannah Morning News

“Engrossing chronicle of lives blighted and redeemed....Eschewing social science jargon and deploying extraordinary powers of observation and empathy, Kozol crafts dense, novelistic character studies that reveal the interplay between individual personality and the chaos of impoverished circumstances.  Like a latter-day Dickens (but without the melodrama), he gives us another powerful indictment of America's treatment of the poor.” —Publisher's Weekly (starred)

“In this engaging, illuminating, often moving book, [Kozol] recounts the lives of poor black and Latino children—many now close friends—who once lived in Manhattan’s Martinique Hotel….Cleareyed, compassionate and hopeful.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred)

“An engaging look at the broader social implications of ignoring poverty as well as a very personal look at individuals struggling to overcome it.” —Booklist (starred)

“Jonathan Kozol is America’s premier chronicler of life among the children of societal neglect. And Fire in the Ashes may be his best book yet . . . . Kozol does not just write about these people; he becomes an intimate part of their lives, sharing their triumphs, defeats, and, too often, mourning their deaths . . . . If you care about the children who are the future of America, this is a book you must read.” —Ellis Cose, author of The End of Anger and The Rage of a Privileged Class
 
“Despite the steep odds stacked against these children—which too many cannot overcome—this is a hopeful book thanks to those who do. The incredible resilience, grit and grace of children like Pineapple are a call to urgent action.” —Marian Wright Edelman, President, Children’s Defense Fund
 
“Kozol has a knack for describing his relationships with poverty-stricken children with a sympathy that is so straightforward one cannot indulge in pity.  Fire in the Ashes is a wonderful book. I couldn’t put it down.” —Deborah Meier, author of In Schools We Trust and The Power of Their Ideas
 
“Fire in the Ashes is a terrific book—powerful, insightful, and heartbreaking.”
—David Berliner, author of The Manufactured Crisis

SEPTEMBER 2012 - AudioFile

Kozol returns with another heart-wrenching exploration of the stratified landscape of opportunity in America. It’s made all the more potent through Keythe Farley’s narration. Kozol reflects on some of the failures and successes social welfare actions have had with people he’s been close to at different times in his work with underserved and underprivileged children. He traces their trajectory and reflects on his own role as well as how society helped or hindered each person. Farley embodies the older and caring tone of Kozol, teasing out the hope and dismay as Kozol shares his stories. Farley captures the personalities of the different people featured in the audiobook while also doing well with emphasis and delivery to tease out Kozol’s nuanced feelings. L.E. © AudioFile 2012, Portland, Maine

Kirkus Reviews

The award-winning author of Death at an Early Age (1967) tells the stories of the later lives of poor children who grew up in the Bronx. Kozol (Letters to a Young Teacher, 2007, etc.) has worked with children in inner-city schools for 50 years. In this engaging, illuminating, often moving book, he recounts the lives of poor black and Latino children--many now close friends--who once lived in Manhattan's Martinique Hotel and were relocated in the late 1980s upon the closing of that crowded and filthy shelter to Mott Haven, a poor Bronx neighborhood. As the children grew into young adulthood, Kozol kept in touch with them and their families through visits, emails and phone calls. In a series of intimate portraits, he describes the astonishing odds the children faced and how many managed, with the critical help of mentors and caring others, to achieve successful lives, both in the conventional sense of graduating from college, but above all, by becoming kind and loving human beings. There is Leonardo, recruited by a New England boarding school, where he emerged as a leader; the introspective Jeremy, who befriended a Puerto Rican poet, got through college and took a job at a Mott Haven church that is central to the lives of many; and the buoyant, winning Pineapple, whose Guatemalan parents provide the emotional security of a warm home. "I'm going to give a good life to my children," says Lisette, 24, after her troubled brother's suicide. "I have to do it. I'm the one who made it through." Some children are still struggling to find their way, writes the author, but they do so with "the earnestness and elemental kindness" that he first saw in them years ago. Cleareyed, compassionate and hopeful.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940169378481
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	08/28/2012
Edition description:	Unabridged
Sales rank:	1,163,239

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Chapter 1
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Excerpted from "Fire in the Ashes"
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Copyright © 2013 Jonathan Kozol.
Excerpted by permission of Crown/Archetype.
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