Amazing Grace by Jonathan Kozal focuses on race and poverty by exploring the.
Lives of inner-city residents in the South Bronx. Kozal focuses on the troubles of everyday life for children who live in the poorest congressional district of the United States, Mott Haven, in New York City's South Bronx. These young black and Hispanic children strive for survival while living in a community of violence and disease. Thousands of people were killed from fires, accidents shootings or diseases such as AIDS. There lives seem astonishing to think about but there so used to them that to them there as normal as everyone else's.
Living in the impoverished urban neighborhood of Mott Haven, you do not what will happen next. No one is there to protect you not even the police. If you step on somebody's foot or even look at someone the wrong way he might pull out a gun and kill you. These are not only adults but kids as young as 14 or even 12. Women are victims of sexual abuse and rape. For example, a little girl who was only eleven was found burned and murdered under the Bruckner Boulevard. ( Kozol p.48). People get killed for no reason. You can get shot simply just walking in the lobby of your own building and then later someone will find out it was a mistake. Sound of gunshots is nothing new to the people of this urbanized community. When they hear a gunshot everyone knows to fall on there knees and crawl over into the hallway were there are no windows. "I taught them to do it like the men do it in the army, crawling on there stomachs". States Charlayne a nanny of children (Kozol-p.66").
Diseases such as AIDS were spreading around very rapidly in South Bronx. Nine out of ten children born with aids are black kids or Latinos, many of their mothers or fathers IV users. In a building on Boston Road, 27 people are diagnosed with aids and that is only in one section of the building. (Kozol-p.13) Children as young as 14 start doing crack.