Live to See the Day: Coming of Age in American Poverty

ISBN: 1250850053

Author: Goyal, Nikhil

Condition: New

An indelible portrait of three children struggling to survive in the poorest neighborhood of the poorest large city in AmericaKensington, 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 families inthe United States. This is the story of their coming-of-age, which is beset by violence-theviolence of homelessness, hunger, incarceration, stray bullets, sexual and physical assault, thehypermasculine logic of the streets, and the drug trade. In Kensington, eighteenth birthdays arenot rites of passage but statistical miracles.One mistake drives Ryan out of middle school and into the juvenile justice pipeline. ForEmmanuel, his queerness means his mothers rejection and sleeping in shelters. School closuresand budget cuts inspire Giancarlos to lead walkouts, which get him kicked out of the system.Although all three are high school dropouts, they are on a quest to defy their fate and theirneighborhood and get high school diplomas.In a triumph of empathy and drawing on nearly a decade of reporting, sociologist andpolicymaker Nikhil Goyal follows Ryan, Giancarlos, and Emmanuel on their mission, plungingdeep into their lives as they strive to resist their designated place in the social hierarchy. In theprocess, Live to See the Day confronts a new age of American poverty, after the end of welfareas we know it, after zero tolerance in schools criminalized a generation of students, after theodds of making it out are ever slighter.