"...but bubbling in a Scantron does not stop bullets from bursting."

In just the preface of There Are No Children Here, there is an exchange between the author and the mother LaJoe that really set the tone for the entire book. LaJoe said “But you know, there are no children here. They’ve seen too much to be children” and then later commented about the importance about stories being told and then commented to the author:

She had once said to me that she occasionally wished she were deaf. The
shooting. The screaming. Babies crying. Children shrieking. Sometimes she
thought it would all drive her insane. So maybe it would be best if she
couldn’t hear at all.

Within just the first couple of pages of this book, we see the importance of a few things. One, how inner-city life affects the daily life of residents in various ways that is hard to imagine; two, the way that different components that make up inner-city life affects the innocence of children and makes them “grow up” in unimaginable ways; and third, how important narratives, like these, are in order to gain a new perspective that theory and other statistics just cannot give us.

Some of the realities that the children and families faced included LaJoe and her five children huddling in the hall to avoid the guns fired outside to Lafeyette being only ten years old when he saw someone get shot.  In class, Stephanie mentioned how the book portrayed the realities of not just one thing happening but a series of events and situations that occur that never seems to end. For example, after the gunfire ceases, LaJoe starts to clean but immediately that even becomes stressful because of the situation the apartment is in – maintenance problems are at a high, there’s a lot of clutter, and so forth. Their experience is a series of many things ranging from dealing with violence and staying safe to dealing with poor living conditions and the stress that comes from that environment.

Malcolm London, a Chicago poet and activist, shares a lot of poetry and work based on his experience being raised in the West Side of Chicago. His poem, High School Training Ground, reminds me of “There Are No Children Here,” particularly the way the work highlights the every day life that youth go through and how they are trying to survive.

Malcolm’s poem goes:

Homework is stressful, but when you go home every day and your home is work, you don't want to pick up any assignments. Reading textbooks is stressful, but reading does not matter when you feel your story is already written, either dead or getting booked. Taking tests is stressful, but bubbling in a Scantron does not stop bullets from bursting. 

Malcolm also has another poem called “Grand Slam” that continues to talk about his experience growing up in the West Side of Chicago. It is definitely worth a listen.

Then, we have This American Life, which followed around Harper High School. Harper High School is located in the West Englewood neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago. This segment is really interesting because it follows around Harper High School for a few months, to see how they deal with the ongoing violence around their school, particularly because they have over 20 shootings affecting their students in one year.

The segment also talks about gangs and how students get involved with gangs, basically saying that they really have no choice if want to join or not because it is all pre-determined based on their location.  And the gangs do not operate like the gangs we see in There Are No Children Here.

The gangs in the Englewood neighborhood today are not those gangs. There's no central leader, no hierarchy, no colors. The fights aren't over drug territory. In fact, lots of these gangs aren't even selling drugs. They're different gangs, with different rules. These rules apply absolutely to boys. Girls get slightly more leeway.

Here's a dialogue between reporter, Linda Lutton, and a police officer, Officer Washington.

                 Linda Lutton

He says it used to be possible to be neutral-- what they called a "neutron."

Officer Washington

There is no neutrons anymore. It used to be if you play sports, or you were academically better than the average kid, they didn't bother you. Now it's different. It doesn't matter. If you live here, you're part of them. You live on that block, or you live in that area, you're one of them. The way they get to school, they have to come to school with one of these factions, one of these gangs. They're going to come to school with them. They don't have a choice.

The segment goes on to talk about how Harper High School tries to maintain a neutral ground for students, especially students who affiliate themselves with certain gangs. The segment also follows around a student, Devonte, who accidentally shot his younger brother. We see the way that gun violence affects homes and the trauma that affects Devonte's life.

Mural located in West Englewood

The segment, like Malcolm London's poem High School Training Ground, talks about how problems faced in neighborhoods affect student participation in school, especially if the school is structured in a way is so focused on standardized testing. I brought up Malcolm London and the This American Life segment on Harper High School because they represent Chicago in a way that still connects to what There Are No Children Here has focused on in the first half of the book. I think it is important to look at also more recent examples, from personal perspectives, on how life in the inner city is like.