I Don't Wish Nobody to Have a Life Like Mine

February 1, 2010
Chura, Mr. C. to his students, spent 10 years teaching students being held in adult jails for crimes ranging from drug sales to assault. He saw many of his students come and go and return again to the facility as they struggled with lives of poverty and crime. Some students flourished behind bars in a place that, despite its regimentation and inanity, was safer than their home environments. He recalls the raw, gritty emotions of young men with little education and few options, exercising sometimes violent and childish outlets for all that wild, pent-up adolescent energy. Among his students: Wade, a young man hed met years before, still showing stacks of loving photos of his mothers slow deterioration into drug addiction and AIDS, and Kahlil, starved for attention and struggling with nightmarish paranoia. Chura describes them as children of profound disappointmentin parents, communities, schoolsoverseen by adults who were likewise disappointed and are unnecessarily cruel and officious. Chura offers a compelling personal look at the failings of the juvenile justice system.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)