Cuz: The Life and Times of Michael A.
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.60 (603 Votes) |
| Asin | : | B06XNK3466 |
| Format Type | : | |
| Number of Pages | : | 209 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2015-04-29 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
but virtually every urban center in the nation. Why? Why did her cousin, a precocious young man who dreamed of being a firefighter and a writer, end up dead? Why did he languish in prison? And why, at the age of fifteen, was he in an alley in South Central Los Angeles, holding a gun while trying to steal someone’s car?Cuz means both “cousin” and “because.” In this searing memoir, Allen unfurls a "new American story" about a world tragically transformed by the sudden availability of narcotics and the rise of street gangs—a collision, followed by a reactionary War on Drugs, that would devastate not only South Central L.A. At thirteen, sensitive, talkative Michael Allen was suddenly tossed into this cauldron, a violent world where he would be tried at fifteen as an adult for an attempted carjacking, and where he would be sent, along with an entire generation, cascading into the s
The pacing is brisk and novelistic, but the message is large and clear: we need urgently to reform the system through which we process juveniles who commit crime, because the current system perpetuates the very injustices it was designed to address.” - Andrew Solomon. M. Coetzee“In this narrative of freedom and incarceration, education and disadvantage, rehabilitation and punishment, Danielle Allen paints an unforgettable portrait of a cousin she loved. “A literary and political event like Toni Morrison’s Playing in the Dark, Danielle Allen’s Cuz is an elegiac memoir and social jeremiad born out of the tragedy of mass incarceration. In plain terms, stripped of the jargon of the social scien
Danielle Allen is the James Conant Bryant University Professor at Harvard University and author of Cuz and Our Declaration, winner of the Parkman Prize. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.