★ 06/19/2023
Sociologist Goyal (Schools on Trial) delivers a nuanced and intimate portrayal of three Puerto Rican teens growing up in the Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia, drawing on a decade of research in the community to demonstrate how poverty is a barely surmountable obstacle for disadvantaged young people. Ryan Rivera, Giancarlos Rodriguez, and Emmanuel Coreano are students at El Centro de Estudiantes, an alternative school and “last chance” for the trio to avoid becoming high school dropouts. Goyal also profiles the boys’ mothers, painting a generational picture of poverty’s effects. (Ivette, Emmanuel’s disabled single mother, receives only $10,000 a year in public assistance.) The need for money drives Ryan and Giancarlos to drug-dealing, while Emmanuel contends with unstable and unsafe housing. Their harrowing stories are enriched by closely observed details that will linger in the reader’s mind, like Emmanuel’s struggle to store his few prized items of clothing somewhere clean. While Goyal points to deindustrialization and a lack of good jobs, the war on drugs that unfairly targets people of color, and other causes of his subjects’ poverty, he makes the case that direct government financial support is the best method to help impoverished young people, and laments the recent expiration of the pandemic-era child tax credit, of which the author was an architect. It’s an enthralling and often maddening read. (Aug.)
A Best Book of 2023 by The New Yorker
"The safety net is in tatters, Goyal shows, and poverty is a tightrope walk with no room for error … Goyal is a vivid writer — the stories he tells about these kids’ circumstances are painful and viscerally frustrating … The reader begins to ask lots of what-ifs, wishing for much better outcomes for all three teenagers."
—The New York Times
"The stories of these children will change the way you think about poverty … A sweeping indictment of what it means to be poor in America"
—Washington Post
"Sweeping work of reportage about life in the low-income neighborhood of Kensington … [Goyal] depicts in granular detail the suffocating effects of poverty."
—The New Yorker
"Gripping … It is also a call to action aimed at city leaders who have not done nearly enough to address historical neglect and a country that could change policies and save lives."
—Philadelphia Inquirer
"A book of both big ideas — reflecting Goyal's former job as a senior policy advisor to Sen. Bernie Sanders — and close-up immersive journalism"
—Los Angeles Times
"Writing with profound empathy and heart…It is an in-depth, real, gut-wrenching story (an ethnography) of the lives of children who are enduring the policies and actions that divide us and perpetuate inequities. Goyal is a beautiful writer and engages the reader in the lives of Corem, Ryan, and Giancarlos in order to push us to act, to care, and to change."
—Forbes
"A nuanced and intimate portrayal of three Puerto Rican teens growing up in the Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia, drawing on a decade of research in the community to demonstrate how poverty is a barely surmountable obstacle for disadvantaged young people. It’s an enthralling and often maddening read."
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"From a passionate warrior for joy and justice in our public schools, Live to See the Day is a beautifully empathetic work of powerful reportage that reads like a gripping novel. The struggle of these children to rise above the brutality they experience in the schools and streets of Kensington offers at least some seeds of hope at a very dark moment in our history."
—Jonathan Kozol, author of Savage Inequalities
"In this impassioned, riveting feat of reporting, Nikhil Goyal follows three extraordinary children who climb mountains every day to defy the hand that America dealt them. If we did not already know that children cannot learn well when they are hungry, homeless, and criminalized, this book will leave us in no doubt. At once uplifting and enraging, this eloquent indictment just might move those with power to make real changes, to ensure that all of our children can live to see the day."
—Congressman Jamaal Bowman
"An incisive, compassionate depiction of families in a crisis not of their making and a vision of the policy choices our country could adopt to save their lives."
—Heather McGhee, author of The Sum of Us
"A heart-rending study of the heavy burden poor children bear in this country, Live to See the Day is a much-needed challenge to dreadful policy decisions, a predatory education and justice system, and a legacy of racism."
—Greg Grandin, author of The End of the Myth
"This powerfully realized book is a call to understand and act. Offering a reminder of the many costs exacted by deep poverty, its compelling portraits of young lives injured by humiliation, danger, and structures of exclusion also are stories of talent and resilience, struggles to overcome, and uncertain quests to survive against the odds. The significance of Live to See the Day is profound, transcending its riveting ethnography of three children, one city, one neighborhood, and one school."
—Ira Katznelson, author of Fear Itself: The New Deal and the Origins of Our Time
"An illuminating chronicle of life on the edge amid crushing poverty and neglect in America’s poorest big city. Live to See the Day is powerful and essential reading."
—David Zucchino, author of Wilmington's Lie
"Nikhil Goyal’s gripping portrayal of three teenagers struggling to survive under the harshest of circumstances brings to life the terrible failure of the federal government to reduce poverty and ensure a decent life for all Americans. Everyone needs to read this. And then do something about it."
—Diane Ravitch, author of Slaying Goliath: The Passionate Resistance to Privatization and the Fight to Save America's Public Schools
"A monument of superb and dedicated reporting, very much in the vein of Katherine Boo and Jason DeParle. An act more of empathy than sympathy, Live to See the Day captures harsh realities in convincing, telling detail, and it will leave you looking for ways to make changes. Fortunately, Nikhil Goyal has some to offer. An instant classic."
—Bill McKibben, author of The Flag, the Cross, and the Station Wagon
06/01/2023
Policymaker and sociologist Goyal's (Schools on Trial) book is a grim but empathetic account of what deep poverty does to children and adults. The author digs deep into the coming-of age stories of three Puerto Rican boys: Ryan, Giancarlos, and Emmanuel, each navigating their way around Kensington, one of the poorest neighborhoods in Philadelphia, the country's poorest big city. Young people in Kensington have low odds of making it to their 18th birthdays. Faced with the wide availability of drugs, violence on the streets and at home, unstable living arrangements, and the near total absence of role models, the three boys eventually drop out of school and search for a stable and crime-free existence. Augmenting their stories are those of the boys' mothers, friends, teachers, and Ryan's and Giancarlos's pregnant girlfriends. Emmanuel, who is queer, is rejected and kicked out by his mother, forcing him to sleep at shelters. Eventually, all three boys enroll in an alternative school, which leads to improved chances of survival and opportunities. This book will likely make readers better understand the depths of poverty. VERDICT For non-academic audiences curious about and empathetic toward the deeply personal consequences of entrenched poverty.—Robert Beauregard
2023-06-15
A chronicle of three adolescents living in poverty in Philadelphia’s Kensington neighborhood.
In this follow-up to Schools on Trial, Goyal, a former senior policy adviser for Bernie Sanders, brings readers into the lives of Ryan, Emmanuel, and Giancarlo, students at the “alternative ‘last chance’ high school called El Centro de Estudiantes.” Given his previous publications, and the school as the connection between his main subjects, readers might expect education to be the dominant theme. Instead, the author intertwines topics like truancy, school closures, dropouts, and nefarious for-profit programs for students with disciplinary issues with discussions of mental illness and the lack of treatment in impoverished communities, Philadelphia’s many socioeconomic problems, the nomadic life that poverty often requires, and the particular challenges facing LGBTQ+ youth living in poverty. These are all important issues, and Goyal is an undeniably compassionate guide, but his cultural commentary doesn’t quite address any one issue with enough depth. The author remains focused on the teens who make their way through El Centro, and their stories are powerful, both heartbreaking and checkered with hope. The personal narratives lend intimate context to numerous systemic issues, and the threads about Emmanuel are particularly original and memorable. However, Goyal does not offer a truly clear lens through which to understand his main characters’ stories: Has El Centro saved them, allowed other schools to shirk their responsibilities, or served simply as a checked box? Perhaps the uncertainty of that answer is the point, but many readers may be left wanting more. One can expect that as his academic career matures and his research about and relationships with his subjects deepen, Goyal will be a forceful contributor to the work on many of the devastatingly and frustratingly intertwined topics he is only able to touch on in this book.
A well-intentioned, straightforward narrative that teases the complexity of a series of societal issues.
