“I’m not afraid of dying. What I’m afraid of is losing my mother, of being in prison, of being a failure. I’m afraid of living,” a resident of a halfway house on the West Side tells Alex Kotlowitz in his new book An American Summer. It is but one of the countless heartrending insights the author gleaned from interviews with some 200 crime victims and perpetrators, their loved ones, and observers of violence on the streets of Chicago in the summer of 2013. The result is a crazy-quilt portrait of life in a city at war with itself. By giving voices and faces to those touched by violence, Kotlowitz makes the reader bear witness in a way news headlines and academic studies cannot. He erases the line between us and them.
If one were to base one’s view of Chicago’s African-American and Latinx communities solely on news reports, the picture would be of a war zone populated by roaming gangsters and cowering victims. Kotlowitz’s work over several books, as well as the documentary The Interrupters, which he coproduced, weaves a much more complex tapestry of the forces that contribute to violence in the city. Economic instability, addiction, racism, and the collapse of familial structures all play a part. Kotlowitz has no prescriptive cures. He’s not a polemicist, but rather a keenly empathetic witness. He prefers to describe the conditions that trouble him (and should trouble every citizen of Chicago), rather than offer answers. “Many parents take out life insurance policies on their children, not because they’re looking to profit off a child’s death but rather they are assured of having funds for their funeral,” he muses after a particularly wrenching interview.
By Alex Kotlowitz (Nan A. Talese). Appearance on The Interview Show with Mark Bazer. Fri 4/5, 6:30 PM, The Hideout, 1354 W. Wabansia, 773-227-4433, hideoutchicago.com, $15.
Chicago Humanities Festival. Sat 4/27, 2:30 PM, UIC Dorin Forum, 725 Roosevelt, 312-605-8444, chicagohumanities.org, $10-$20.
