Jonathan Kozol's books have become touchstones of the American conscience.  In his most personal and optimistic book to date, Jonathan returns to the South Bronx to spend another four years with the children who have come to be his friends at P.S. 30 and St. Ann's.  A fascinating narrative of daily urban life seem through the eyes of children, Ordinary Resurrections gives the human face to Northern segregation and provides a stirring testimony to the courage and resilience of the young.

Yet another classic of unblinking social observation from one of the finest writers ever to work in the genre, Ordinary Resurrections is a piercing discernment of right and wrong, of hope and despair -- from our nations's corridors of power to its poorest city streets.

FROM OUR EDITORS

In Ordinary Resurrections, Jonathan Kozol offers a different, more hopeful vision of life in the South Bronx than was found in his previous book, Amazing Grace. Yes, there is poverty and depravation, but in this account, Kozol views the hardscrabble district through the eyes of the children who live there, and paints an admiring portrait of the teachers, priests, parents, and grandparents who strive against all odds to ensure that these children grow up with a strong sense of pride in who they are and where they come from.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

In a stirring departure from his earlier work, Jonathan Kozol has written his most personal and hopeful book to date, an energized and unexpected answer to the bleakness of Death at an Early Age, the classic that he published more than 30 years ago." "Like his most recent book, Amazing Grace, this work also takes place in New York's South Bronx; but it is a markedly different book in mood and vantage point, because we see life this time through the eyes of children, not, as the author puts it, from the perspective of a grown-up man encumbered with a Harvard education. Here, too, we see devoted teachers in a good but underfunded public elementary school that manages, against all odds, to be a warm, inviting, and protective place; and we see the children also in the intimate religious setting of a church in which they are watched over by the vigilant grandmothers of the neighborhood and by a priest whose ministry is, first and foremost, to the very young." "A work of guarded optimism that avoids polemic and the fevered ideologies of partisan debate, Ordinary Resurrections is a book about the little miracles of stubbornly persistent innocence in children who are still unsoiled by the world and still can view their place within it without cynicism or despair." "The author's personal involvement with specific children deepens as the narrative evolves. A Jewish man, now 63 years old, he finds his own religious speculations growing interwoven with the moral and religious explorations of the children, some of whom have been his friends for nearly seven years. The children change, of course, from year to year as they learn more about the world; but the author is changed also by the generousand tender ways in which the children, step by step, unlock their secrets and unveil the mysteries of their belief to him.

SYNOPSIS

June 2000

In Ordinary Resurrections: Children in the Years of Hope, award-winning author Jonathan Kozol tells the stories of a group of children in the South Bronx whom he's known for many years and who, with joyful energy, delicious humor, and unshakable faith in their own self-worth, defy the morbid expectations of society.

In the section of the Bronx where these children live, 25 percent of children suffer asthma, 75 percent of men are unemployed, 99.8 percent of children in the public schools are black or Hispanic, and nearly 95 percent of families live on yearly incomes of $10,000 or less. Incarceration rates for men are so high that countless children see their fathers only when they visit them in prison.

Written from the vantage point of the children, Ordinary Resurrections offers a glimpse at the wanderings and dramas of these ordinary children, played out against the harsh realities of one of the most deeply segregated urban neighborhoods in the U.S.

FROM THE CRITICS

Joshua Klein - Onion AV Club

So much energy has been expended discussing and debating the plight of the inner-city poor that the lives of the poor themselves sometimes seem to fall by the wayside. After all, talking about a group of people is different from talking with a group of people, and statistics can only illustrate so much. Jonathan Kozol first sounded the wake-up call about the state of the American poor with his book Death At An Early Age, and 30 years later his quest to illuminate the plight of the disadvantaged hasn't reached its conclusion; if anything, it's intensified. In the early '90s, Kozol--a white Harvard grad and '60s activist--spent time in some of the poorest neighborhoods of the South Bronx. His experiences were detailed in Amazing Grace, but the people he encountered, specifically the children, called for a second book. Ordinary Resurrections returns Kozol to New York's forgotten underclass, but his creeping old age and the illness of his parents makes this voyage more personal. As is his habit, he lets the children he meets speak freely in their own words, listening rather than lecturing and relating what he finds to the reader. Though Kozol does have a streak of hectoring in him, for the most part his subjects--here primarily a trio of precocious first-graders named Elio, Pineapple, and Ariel--speak for him, providing an illuminating view of how these children see a world where fathers reside "upstate," shootings are commonplace, and schools struggle to stay afloat without funding. As usual for Kozol, the details he illustrates can be sad, funny, and moving, but by focusing on children, he offers a faint glimmer of hope that the next generation might right the wrongs perpetuated before them.

Gwendolyn Brooks

A magnificent gift to us all.

Marian Wright Edelman

A deeply moving and marvelous book. Jonathan Kozol has shared poetic and powerful stories of the poor children of Mott Haven who became a part of his life.

New York Times Book Review

Affecting...deeply moving. This is the most personal of Kozol's efforts.

Publishers Weekly

A persistent voice of conscience, Kozol poses the question: do we want our schools to remain segregated and unequal? The National Book Award-winning education activist revisits Mott Haven, a poverty-stricken section of the South Bronx that was the setting for his two previous books, Amazing Grace and Savage Inequalities. The tone here is more optimistic, partly because his extended conversations and interactions with children take place not only at public elementary schools, but also at a supportive after-school center run by St. Ann's Church, a neighborhood Episcopalian congregation that reaches out to the hungry and homeless. Ranging in age from six to 12, all of the children in Kozol's empathetic, leisurely portraits are black or Hispanic; some know hunger; many have lost at least one relative to AIDS; a large number of them see their fathers only when they visit them in prison. Many have asthma or other severe respiratory problems, which Kozol blames on the high density of garbage facilities in the area and on a waste incinerator that was not shut down until 1998 after protests by community activists, environmentalists and doctors. His sensitive profiles highlight these kids' resilience, quiet tenacity, eagerness to learn and high spirits, as well as the teachers' remarkable dedication despite sharp cutbacks in personnel and services; overcrowded, decaying buildings; and crime-riddled streets. Yet as Kozol makes piercingly clear, the students' "ordinary resurrections" can only go so far amid what he calls "apartheid education," a racially and economically segregated school system that in effect assigns disadvantaged children to constricted destinies. Major ad/promo; 11-city author tour. (May) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.| Read all 9 "From The Critics" >