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“People are wrestling with the problem [of youth violence] all over the country,” says Miles Harvey, a journalist and professor at DePaul University, and the book’s editor. “We have to start listening to people in the trenches. People commodify books. We don’t want to be on a street corner handing them out. We want people to want them, to consider them something of value. It’s a tool to use in anti-violence work.”
The book contains interviews with 35 people, told in Studs Terkel-style first person: current and former gang members, parents and siblings of young people who have been killed, and cops, lawyers, nurses, and community activists who are working to stop the violence.
Last spring Harvey and seven of his students prepared a dramatic version of some of the monologues that played at the Steppenwolf Upstairs Theatre and then toured through various neighborhood branches of the Chicago Public Library. (It inspired Reader critic Tony Adler to write this haiku: “An emptied Tec-9./A body on a gurney./Slow, slow fade to black.”) At least one interviewee was present at every performance. Some of the kids in the audiences, Harvey says, asked for their autographs.
How Long Will I Cry – Book Trailer from Big Shoulders Books on Vimeo.
