Home > Work > An American Summer: Love and Death in Chicago
1 " . . .you can't talk about death without celebrating life. How amid the devastation, many still manage to stay erect in a world that's slumping around them. How despite the bloodshed, some manage, heroically, not only to push on but also to push back. How in death there is love. "
― Alex Kotlowitz , An American Summer: Love and Death in Chicago
2 " There are so many . . . who carry the violence, who keep moving forward enshrouded in its aftermath. Yet there doesn't seem to be any sense of urgency, especially among the rest of us. "
3 " The shooting doesn't end. Nor does the grinding poverty. Or the deeply rooted segregation. Or the easy availability of guns. Or the shuttered schools and boarded-up homes. Or the tensions between police and residents. And yet each shooting is unlike the last, every exposed and bruised life exposed and bruised in its own way. "
4 " In a nation that likes to see itself as forgiving, we are mulishly unforgiving of those who have committed a felony... "
5 " Do you directly target the violence because it so discourages any kind of economic development? Or do you bring in jobs and rehab homes, knowing that with a sense of opportunity the violence will diminish? "
6 " This is grief. You feel ripped in half. Half of you wanting to retreat, to disappear, to find a place where no one asks questions. And then there’s the part of you that wants to remember, has to remember because if you don't, not only will the day cease to exist but so will the reality of that moment. "
7 " The only thing you can do is love, because it is the only thing that leaves light inside you, instead of the total, obliterating darkness. "
8 " I’m going to share something I learned since I been here and that is us as people when we have difficulty on our journey of life we tend to focus on what we need at the moment that we forget what we already have… "
9 " You grow up in a community with abandoned homes, a jobless rate of over 25 percent, underfunded schools, and you stand outside your home, look at the city's gleaming downtown skyline, at its prosperity, and you know your place in the world. "
10 " 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. "
