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Today‘s portable reading…

#OutAndAbout #ReadingOnTheTrain #Nonfiction

It‘s hard to “like” a book like this, which is just a chronicle of tragedies— but it was so close and intimate and didn‘t pretend to be anything it wasn‘t. It spent time with the people affected and let them say their piece and didn‘t try to lionize or demonize them. I was impressed and sad. I wanted to keep reading forever.

An amazing snapshot into a violent summer in Chicago. The story focuses on the summer of 2013, but strattles in the past and post. It intersects the poverty, lack of affordable housing, sustainable employment and divestment that #Chicago has taken the past few decades.

"People have a capacity to keep going even when their world has been shattered. We all long for connection, for affirmation that our lives matter."

The overwhelming violence in Chicago is often examined from a structural point of view - as well it should be, because it‘s tied to so many complicated systemic issues. But sometimes that reduces the individuals affected to stereotypes (like victim, perpetrator, gang member, witness) that don‘t reflect that complexity. This book tells many Chicagoans‘ rich, multilayered stories with great empathy - super valuable data for changemakers.

My League of Women Voters book club is discussing this on Tuesday. We'll also have a guest speaker who is (or was) principal of a high school in Chicago. It should be an interesting presentation and discussion.

The book is, of course, really difficult in terms of topic. The author presents devastating social justice issues, without hitting the reader over the head. I hope that everyone who reads it gets it.

This book was eye opening and emotional. I found myself Googling names and putting a face to the story. Those stories were the most heartbreaking of all. Overall though, I highly recommend this book especially to Chicagoans.

A few years ago, CNN showed a docuseries called Chicagoland. It highlighted the challenges being felt by that city and the people that were the most impacted. An American Summer does the same, only in book format. I feel that books like this are important. I see so much of my students in these stories. I only wish that I came away with a better idea of how to effect some type of change.

Shocking amounts of gun violence. This problem is so big that it‘s really difficult to wrap your head around. This book isn‘t too political or technical. It is just a series of essays, each focusing on a different family that has had their lives ripped apart by this barbaric violence. It‘s about the people, not the policies. 😡