There Are No Children Here

I am reading There Are No Children Here and trying to decide if it should be on my list of books  for students in College Writing this summer.  Our theme will be adversity, and we will be looking at how people cope with adversity.  But because this book focuses on children, I'm not sure it will work.  Children, after all, have limited choices in what they can do when faced with difficult situations.  For instance, the boys Pharoah and Lafeyette want some spending money.  They are 10 and 12 years old, so there's not much they can do to get it.  Lafeyette "watches" people's cars for them during Chicago Bulls games.  It's his attempt to solve the problem of not having money--what psychologists would call "problem-based coping."  Other than asking his mother over and over again (and hearing No also over and over again) what else could he do?  Or when Craig is killed by the police.  Lafeyette asks how such a good person could come to such a bad end.  No one, including the adults, seems able to do anything but grieve. 

The helplessness of everyone in this book is puzzling to me.  I think the writer wants me to accept that there is nothing that anyone could do to change their situation: they are poor, with little education and few skills.  They don't have the power to do anything to improve their environment.  It's hard for me to accept that.  Why can't Craig's mother get any answers to her questions about his death?  What if she went back to the police another time? perhaps then they would tell her what really happened.  Why can't LaJoe get a job?  Couldn't she be a waitress or find some other kind of work that would bring income (other than public assistance) into the  house?  And why does LaShawn, her daughter, keep having children?  She is 18 with 3 kids!  Maybe children are the one joy that they have.  I find it hard to sympathize because no one seems to do anything to change their situation.  In fact, the things that they do seem to make things worse.  Perhaps it's the difference between 1988 and 2011: I'm much less inclined to sympathize with the family's problems than the author wants me to be.