Essay Questions

How has race contributed to Horner’s current situation?

Kotlowitz expounds, “The blight has continued and is particularly evident today west of Horner, a section of the city that, along with the south side, during the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s became home to over a half- million blacks who migrated from the South, displacing the earlier immigrants.”

Blacks predominantly reside in Horner. Most of them are poor; hence, they have contributed to the neighborhood's wreckage where the prospects of overcoming poverty are slim. Essentially, Horner is a poor neighborhood; the blight of poverty in Horner exhibits the intersection between blackness and poverty. They arrive as poor immigrants, without anything, and have not been able to rise above the poverty into which they settled in when they arrived in Horner.

How does the environment in Horner influence the behaviors of LaJoe’s children?

Kotlowitz explains, “Not that she (LaJoe) could separate the two. Sometimes she blamed her children’s problems on the neighborhood; at other times, she attributed the neighborhood’s decline to the change in people, to the influx of drugs and violence. Her three oldest children, to whom she felt she’d given everything she could, had all disappointed her. All had been in jail at least once. All had been involved with drugs.”

Considering that drugs are omnipresent in Horner, LaJoe’s children are tempted to get involved, Had they been in a neighborhood where there are no drugs, the children’s risk of doing drugs would have been minimal. Parenting in Horner is complicated because the children are exposed to drugs early; they deem drugs a normal constituent of existence.

How does peer pressure impact Lafayette’s character?

Kotlowitz writes, “over the past year Lafayette had begun to change, LaJoe thought. The past spring he’d been caught stealing candy from a Walgreen’s downtown. It was the first time he’d gotten into any kind of trouble. He had been hanging out with a youngster, Keith, who was known among the neighbourhood kids for his ability to swipe expensive bottles of cologne from the display cases at downtown department stores.” Keith is a bad influence on Lafayette. Interacting with Keith changes Lafayette’s character to the degree that he engages in theft. Lafayette yearns for a lifestyle similar to Keith’s’ because he deems it more pleasurable than the one his mother offers him.