There Are No Children Here
Alex Kotlowitz

Again and Again – One treasure of powerful storytelling is how you get something different out of the story each time you read it. The plot doesn’t change. The characters are the same. The words aren’t altered. Yet, somehow, something new emerges from within the pages, rises, and takes hold of your mind and heart in a different way. Originally published in 1991, I’ve read “There Are No Children Here” a couple of times over the subsequent 27 years. Some moments I clearly remembered – medicine chests easily pushed out between public housing apartments, LaJoe’s Christmas visit in Chicago’s Loop, Pharoah’s spelling bee – and others hit me in the gut with the force of the new – LaJoe paying $80 per month for burial insurance for her children, the scenes of sudden gun violence. This most recent reading, too, I found myself thinking of another classic, “To Kill a Mockingbird,” and seeing parallels of despair and hope between that great work of fiction and this great work of fact. One sign of storytelling excellence is that factual stories read like fiction and fictional work reads like they really happened.