There Are No Children Here

The poignant title sets the stage for this 1992 journalistic work, often mistaken for fiction, which exposes life in America's inner-city housing projects. Narrator Dion Graham's even pacing and understated intensity lend sensitivity and immediacy to Kotlowitz's chronicle of his three years of observing the impoverished Rivers family as it struggles with poverty, drugs, gangs, and indifference. Graham's transitions from straight narration to convincing dialogue are seamless and combine with the subject matter to grip the listener and make turning away impossible. Both author and narrator wisely avoid slipping into dramatics, letting events and participants speak for themselves. Although it's more than 20 years old, this powerful account, sadly, is still current and will leave the listener wishing Kotlowitz had written a follow-up. M.O.B. (c) AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine

February 4, 1991
The devastating story of brothers Lafayette and Pharoah Rivers, children of the Chicago ghetto, is powerfully told here by Kotlowitz, a Wall Street Journal reporter who first met the boys in 1985 when they were 10 and seven, respectively. Their family includes a mother, a frequently absent father, an older brother and younger triplets. We witness the horrors of growing up in an ill-maintained housing project tyrannized by drug gangs and where murders and shootings frequently occur. Lafayette tries to cope by stifling his emotions and turning himself into an automaton, while Pharoah first attempts to regress into early childhood and then finds a way out by excelling at school. Kotlowitz's affecting report does not have a ``neat and tidy ending. . . . It is, instead, about a beginning, the dawning of two lives.'' These are lives at a crossroads, not totally without hope of triumphing over their origin. ( Apr .