Cover Image

Requests: 1

Live to see the day coming of age in American poverty

"Kensington, Philadelphia, is distinguished only by its poverty. It is home to Ryan, Giancarlos, and Emmanuel, three Puerto Rican children who live among the most marginalized children and families in the United States. This is their coming-of-age story. It is also the story of families beset b...

Full description

Main Author: Goyal, Nikhil (Author)
Format: Books Print Book
Language: English
Published: New York : Metropolitan Books, Henry Holt and Company, 2023.
Edition: First edition.
Subjects:
Poor > Pennsylvania > Philadelphia.
Marginality, Social > Pennsylvania > Philadelphia.
Puerto Rican children > Pennsylvania > Philadelphia.
Violence > Pennsylvania > Philadelphia.
Kensington (Philadelphia, Pa.) > Social conditions.
Summary: "Kensington, Philadelphia, is distinguished only by its poverty. It is home to Ryan, Giancarlos, and Emmanuel, three Puerto Rican children who live among the most marginalized children and families in the United States. This is their coming-of-age story. It is also the story of families beset by violence--the violence of homelessness, hunger, incarceration, stray bullets, sexual and physical assault, the hypermasculine logic of the streets, and the drug trade. In Kensington, eighteenth birthdays are not rites of passage but statistical miracles. One mistake puts Ryan in the juvenile justice pipeline. Giancarlos can't afford to stop dealing and get off the corner. For Emmanuel, his queerness means his mother's rejection and sleeping in shelters. The three are school dropouts, but they are on a quest to defy their fate and their neighborhood and get high school diplomas. In a triumph of empathy, Nikhil Goyal follows Ryan, Giancarlos, and Emmanuel on their quest, plunging deep into their lives as they strive to resist their designated place in the social hierarchy. In the process, Live to See the Day confronts a new age of American poverty, after the end of "welfare as we know it," after "zero tolerance" in schools criminalized a generation of students, after the odds of making it out are ever slighter"--
Physical Description: xii, 334 pages : maps ; 25 cm.
Bibliography: Includes bibliographical references (pages 274-322) and index.
ISBN: 9781250850065
1250850061
Author Notes: Nikhil Goyal is a sociologist and policymaker who served as senior policy advisor on education and children for Chairman Senator Bernie Sanders on the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions and Committee on the Budget. He developed education, child care, and child tax credit federal legislation as well as a tuition-free college program for incarcerated people and correctional workers in Vermont. He has appeared on CNN, Fox, and MSNBC, and written for the New York Times , Washington Post , Wall Street Journal , Time , The Nation , and other publications. Goyal earned his B.A. at Goddard College and M.Phil and Ph.D at the University of Cambridge. He lives in Vermont.

Similar Items