Fire in the Ashes

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2012

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-3

Chapters 4-5

Chapters 6-9

Chapter 10-Epilogue

Key Figures

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

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Discussion Questions

Themes

The Invisibility of the Poor

Many of the poor people Kozol profiles had been packed into the decrepit and dangerous Martinique Hotel in midtown Manhattan in the late 1980s. There, the children sometimes panhandled close to the touristy theater district, though they were kept away from theater-goers by the police and private guards. The conditions of the Martinique were horrific, but the administration of New York City did not intervene to clean up the shelter.

Then, in the late 1980s, the poor were shuffled to the poorest part of the poorest borough: Mott Haven, in the South Bronx. One of the women Kozol knew in the Martinique noted the way in which the press and New York City bureaucrats often used words like “overflow” to describe the homeless, as if they were refuse. Packed off in the South Bronx, they were surrounded by environmental hazards such as bus and truck depots and medical waste incinerators that caused asthma and other health concerns, and they had access to inferior schools. They were largely out of sight of the rich of New York, and mostly out of mind, too.

The Power of Education

The children whom Kozol profiles all suffered from lack of good educational opportunities. Those who stayed in the Bronx for school were put at an enormous disadvantage by the chaotic and insufficient nature of their schooling. For example, Pineapple’s elementary school was so chaotic that she left it several grade levels behind. Kozol challenges the educational currents that brought “urban academies” to the Bronx, as these are places that offer a specialized education that amounts to little more than preparing kids of color to take on minimum-wage jobs. He refers to the middle schools in the Bronx as “killing fields,” as they destroy children academically and psychologically.

Some fortunate students, such as Pineapple, Leonardo, and Jeremy, were able to attend schools outside of the Bronx, but they had to struggle at times to make up for their insufficient early education. It was through education that some of the children Kozol profiles could move on to better lives, but the access to this type of education was denied them in the Bronx. In many cases, the children had to suffer the pain of being separated from their families to receive a quality education.

Exceptionalism

In the Epilogue, Kozol addresses the idea of exceptionalism: whether the children he profiles who were able to escape the hopelessness and self-destructiveness of others were truly exceptional. He explodes the myth that these children were able to lift themselves up by their own bootstraps. Instead, he says that these children were helped by others.

The children who were able to survive in good shape were those who had a person who cared about them. They had parents who were able to invest themselves in their children’s wellbeing (though he does not cast blame on those who were too poor, sick, or mentally ill to do so), and they also benefited from the intervention of people like Martha, the pastor of St. Ann’s Church, and of Kozol and his educational fund. The survivors could not have thrived without these types of interventions, and the myth of pulling oneself up by one’s bootstraps is just that—a myth. Instead, children who succeed do so because they have people who don’t give up on them. Perhaps the most telling case is Benjamin, as Martha never gave up on him.