AT PERIL: Stories of Injustice

Thomas J. Cottle, AT PERIL: Stories of Injustice

A gifted social scientist and professor of education at Boston University, Cottle has published numerous other books (Hardest Times: The Trauma of Long Term Unemployment) that also combine his objectivity as a sociologist and clinical psychologist with subjective anecdotes of people in crisis. Collected here are true stories of men, women and children living on society's fringe—the poor, the drug addicted, the abused—as told in their own words during interviews with the author. As a context for the difficulties his subjects have faced, Cottle has divided their accounts into injustices caused by failures within the family, the school, the health-care system and society at large. Reminiscent of the work of Robert Coles and Jonathan Kozol, these stories are immediate and compelling. Unforgettable is the narrative of Esther Crighton, who has advanced cancer and who refuses to apologize for the fact that her material comfort comes from her 13-year-old son selling drugs ("Cocaine, I hate that word. But every day I take what it brings me. It's the way me and my son get on the train"). A particularly heartwrenching story is told by 53-year-old Ina Merman, who describes how she and her husband, who have raised children and worked hard all their lives, can no longer afford medical care or adequate nourishment ("Do we eat like kings and queens? You want the truth? I'm embarrassed by what I put on the table sometimes"). Woven throughout these stories are Cottle's sensitive comments about the interconnectivity and interdependency of all Americans. In some ways, he maintains, we are all at risk if we allow increasing numbers of children to grow up in poverty and more and more people to fall through the cracks. (Mar.)

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Reviewed on: 02/26/2001

Genre: Nonfiction

Paperback - 328 pages - 978-1-55849-403-9