Live to See the Day: Coming of Age in American Poverty

by Nikhil Goyal

An indelible portrait of three children struggling to survive in the poorest neighborhood of the poorest large city in America

Kensington, Philadelphia, is distinguished only by its poverty. It is home to Ryan, Giancarlos, and Emmanuel, three Puerto Rican children who live among the most marginalized families in the United States. This is the story of their coming-of-age, which is beset by violence—the violence of homelessness, hunger, incarceration, stray bullets, sexual and physical assault, the hypermasculine logic of the streets, and the drug trade. In Kensington, eighteenth birthdays are not rites of passage but statistical miracles.

One mistake drives Ryan out of middle school and into the juvenile justice pipeline. For Emmanuel, his queerness means his mother’s rejection and sleeping in shelters. School closures and budget cuts inspire Giancarlos to lead walkouts, which get him kicked out of the system. Although all three are high school dropouts, they are on a quest to defy their fate and their neighborhood and get high school diplomas.

In a triumph of empathy and drawing on nearly a decade of reporting, sociologist and policymaker Nikhil Goyal follows Ryan, Giancarlos, and Emmanuel on their mission, plunging deep into their lives as they strive to resist their designated place in the social hierarchy. In the process, Live to See the Day confronts a new age of American poverty, after the end of “welfare as we know it,” after “zero tolerance” in schools criminalized a generation of students, after the odds of making it out are ever slighter.

Genres: Nonfiction, Social Justice, Sociology, Politics, Social Issues, Biography, History

352 pages, Hardcover

First published August 22, 2023

About the author

Nikhil Goyal is a sociologist and author of Live to See the Day: Coming of Age in American Poverty (Metropolitan/Macmillan, 2023). He served as senior policy advisor on education and children for Chairman Senator Bernie Sanders on the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions and the Committee on the Budget. He developed education, child care, and child tax credit federal legislation as well as a tuition-free college program for incarcerated people and correctional workers in Vermont.

Goyal has appeared on CNN, Fox, and MSNBC, and written for the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Time, The Nation, and other publications. He was a Kathryn Davis Fellow for Peace at Middlebury College and Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fellow at the Library Company and Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

Goyal earned his B.A. at Goddard College and M.Phil and Ph.D at the University of Cambridge. He lives in Vermont.

Reviews

[Josiah Cedeño · Rating 2 out of 5]

this one was difficult to read. I had really high expectations and this topic is something I care so much about.

There’s a heaviness that comes from reading a book like this. I guess that’s the point. I felt depressed reading it. We’re not supposed to be comfortable with the poverty, inequality, racism etc. that exists around us.

Maybe it’s the fact that I grew up in Philly and a lot of this info is super repetitive. I don’t think it was well-written. It definitely dragged. It felt like an information dump that bounced all over the place. It was hard to connect emotionally with the main characters too bc of how many characters there were.

Regardless, it’s thought provoking and makes me think of what I’m doing to change the brokenness in the city around me.

[David Kateeb · Rating 4 out of 5]

An incredibly well reported book. Its amazing how much adults and parents fail their children.

[Roger Smitter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Author has a name we don’t see often: Nikhil Goyal And we get a book about schools that most of us who are readers don’t see.

We takes us to a school in the worst place for young kids—a school that has very little to give the students. It’s the very young students in a school with little to give the kids. And Goyal makes it clear that these kids go to school only four miles from Society Hill.

Most of the book shows what the children didn’t get when they go to school. And there are a few statements on what President Clinton and his wife said about their focus on reading for these kids. Chapter 2 tells us about the book with the label “Little Vietnam” to display the community. And some of the students in the schools are young females with babies.

There’s a short trip through the whole of Philadelphia and some history. But the book always goes back to the kids in the center of the city.

There’s several stories about individuals in Chapter 6, “My Baby Daddy.” There’s a mother who manages to squeeze six children into a very small place. A few chapters down the roll, she tells us that number of homicides happen in the community. In 2018, it was 355. All most Chapter 20 focuses on the Trump administration.

Near the end of the book, there’s some pages that have a of what has been done and what more of what could be done.

If you have a teacher or a young person wanting to be a teacher, it’s a great book.

[Catherine Woodman · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a tale of how brown skinned children end up being more handicapped than white children are; a story in three parts. This is the tale of three different children--Ryan, Corem and Giancarlos--with three different sets of circumstances and three different bad breaks. They are all from Kensington, and babies born with an address in Kensington aren’t expected to live beyond their 71st birthday — a staggering 17 years less than children born to families in Society Hill, less than four miles away.
A chunk of the book is spent world-building so readers can grasp the muddy terrain these children navigate, and Goyal does so by layering social systems atop one another so readers can draw connections. As Goyal explains it, underfunded public schools are at the heart of the issue. Schools are governed by racist educational policies that push students into the criminal system through the use of metal detectors, zero-tolerance rules and temperamental resource officers. Children leave the schoolyard and return home to families drowning because of crippling poverty, food insecurity, chronic joblessness, inequitable access to physical and mental health care, domestic violence, evictions, and addiction.

[hrrasmussen · Rating 4 out of 5]

narrative nonfiction that gives a near-firsthand account into growing up in urban poverty, a character-driven story accented with relevant policy and societal interludes. I’d encourage anyone (esp. people who, like myself, grew up very far from this reality) to give it a read

It can feel pretty insurmountable trying to address these issues as one person without any substantial political power, and it’s certainly easier to ignore societal challenges like these than to face and reflect on them, and that’s exactly why books like this need to be read, so we don’t get complicit in relative ease. I cannot imagine what it’s like to endure a childhood like those outlined in the book, but the author helps me get one step closer to understanding

only reason this isn’t a 5 star is because i would have loved a bit more insight from some female characters, especially around the complex dynamics of pregnancy / having kids through all of this

[Jennifer Frazee · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this book but I had a hard time pushing through, which I attribute to the writing style. I was anticipating a first-person narrative, but it is written in third-person and jumps around from family to family. It took longer than I'd like to admit for me to get invested in the characters, but it tells a very important story about the inherent injustices that individuals from underserved areas face. Nikhil Goyal does a fantastic job pulling it all together at the end. He leaves you questioning how we can invest in these communities to make our country better as a whole and drives the point home that individuals are a product of the environment they are born into. Overall, I feel like I have a much better understanding of some trials and tribulations that families (predominately black and latino) face in underserved neighborhoods.

[Shannon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ryan, Giancarlos, and Emmanuel, three Puerto Rican children living in America’s largest, poorest city, Philadelphia, come of age amongst the backdrop of homelessness, hunger, incarceration, sexual abuse and drugs. These three kids are on their own quest: to graduate from high school. But in a world that is systemically against them, what can they do? Goyal has an abundance of knowledge on the American justice and economic systems, shining a stark light on the true failings of the education institutions. This is such an important read and one I cannot recommend enough.

[Brian Storm · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted to like this, but I just couldn't. It's the writing style. The stories jump all over the place and are hard to follow. I lost interest pretty early in, but decided to give it a chance....it only got worse. Gave up 23% in.

[Alix · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow - this was really powerful. One of the few books that I’ve read in this genre that actually presents both success stories and potential policy changes that illustrate a path forward.

[Blane · Rating 1 out of 5]

I really, really wanted to like this book, but it was not to be. I feel for the plight of the real life human suffering described here brought on by a poisonous stew of government mismanagement, corporate greed, institutional racism, toxic masculinity, miseducation, religion, and poor life decisions. This last ingredient is important to my worldview, as I have mentioned in reviews of similar works. Yes, it is acknowledged that life is not fair; some are given better opportunities than others. Ultimately though, despite the life circumstances each of us is handed, we are all responsible for the life decisions we make. For example, as illustrated in the book: Choosing to reproduce as a teenager because "I don't believe in abortion [due to my religion]" even though it is quite obvious neither party is anywhere near ready for such a commitment...thereby perpetuating the endless cycle of poverty for a new generation.

Goyal's writing of all of this is b-o-r-i-n-g and there are just too many people brought in for a page or two before they disappear, with little in the way of explanation as to why they appeared in the first place. A mess of a book about a most important and relevant topic.

[Nancy · Rating 5 out of 5]

In 1983 we moved from Kensington to Olney, from a church parsonage to our own home. Just a year and a half before, my husband had accepted a two-point charge in Kensington; one church was situated at Front and Allegheny, the dividing line where the white neighborhood began, and the other at Kip and Cambria, nestled in the three-story rowhouses built to house textile workers a century before, including Stetson Hats and Quaker lace, long closed.

The first thing the teenagers taught us was the code of the street was “don’t get mad, get even.” Many of the young adults were unemployed, living with their parents even after becoming parents. They hung out at corners under the streetlights at night, and greeted my husband with “Hello, Father,” as he returned home from evening meetings. They kept an eye out for the elderly in the ‘hood.

Every corner had a bar or a corner store. An empty warehouse loomed behind the house, which was teeming with cockroaches and mice. Homeless people slept in our old VW Beetle housed in an unlocked garage off the alley. We heard that police escorted teachers into the school across the street.

My husband had arrived already burned out. He left the parish ministry and we bought a house in Olney. It was a post-war rowhouse on a street with houses still occupied by the original WWII refugee owners, black couples including policemen and nurses, Hispanic couples, and one rental filled with students from the school of optometry a block away.

To the west and south were poor black communities, and to the north an upscale area that had seen better days. We could walk to the train station or the last subway stop in a few minutes.

We lived there for seven years, watching it turn into Koreatown with bilingual street signs. When our son was born. I couldn’t let him play in the park because of the broken glass all over the ground. The local kids come to see him in his stroller, and we watched them break dance on flattened cardboard boxes on the street.

In 1990 my husband left his job in New York City and we returned to Michigan. The long commute and frequent travel had meant he was rarely home and he wanted to be more involved in our son’s life. Plus, things were changing. Crack cocaine had arrived in the city. Twice our dog’s alert thwarted a theft of our car. Houses were being broken into by through the skylight.

There was a time when he couldn’t have imagined living beyond twenty-one, let alone having a well-paying professional job.
from Live to See the Day by Nikal Goyal

When I saw that Live to See the Day was set in Kensington and Olney I had to read it.

The book follows the stories of three North Philadelphia Puerto Rican boys growing up in poverty, with food insecurity, meth addicted parents, and school systems more interested in criminalizing students and ignoring systemic problems than in the welfare of students. And, it traces the generational trauma that warped lives.

We feel compassion for these young people, understanding the towering challenges they face. We feel anger at how they have been marginalized and ignored, and guilty for our complacent ignorance.

Through the stories of these young people, Goyal shows the political reactions to systemic problems that got us to ‘here,’ the ways policies have failed, and the innovate approaches that allowed these boys to succeed.

All they wanted was to finish high school and get the diploma that would allow them an opportunity for a better future.

In other countries, governments support families in need. My Finnish exchange student daughter had lost her job when she married an unemployed teacher, but they had an apartment and food through the state. Here, we break up families and give foster children the support that, if given to their families, would have kept the family intact. Here, children who are not safe at home live on the streets or friend’s couches or in substandard and insecure shelters.

And yes, the book was alive for me because I had been to the places described, although in somewhat better times, but also because it is a masterpiece of narrative nonfiction. Goyal raises important issues and, thankfully, shares an example of approaches that succeed.

Thanks to the publisher for a free book.

[The Curious Spoonie · Rating 2 out of 5]

We have a catastrophic amount of poverty in our country - a country that has been blessed with more than enough skill and resources to eliminate the problem but yet never comes close to helping those who are genuinely in need. In Live to See the Day author Nikhil Goyal examines this tragedy by zeroing in on the struggling city of Kensington, Pennsylvania and, more specifically, the lives of three Puerto Rican boys trying to survive the harsh conditions surrounding them. This is an American story that needs to be told and heard, especially from the mouths of those who are experiencing it every day.

Unfortunately, the exploration of this important topic is limited by the author’s writing style which is choppy and distracting. There are sentences that I found confusing or that, grammatically, just simply don’t make sense. Complicating these issues is Goyal’s attempt to mesh intentionally-casual narrative nonfiction with academic-sounding research and statistics. The result is often jarring as the narration keeps switching back and forth between formal and informal, character perspective to factual commentary.

But really the main issue I had with this book - the problem that really prevented me from being immersed in what should be a very immersive topic - is the prevalence of the author’s own opinions. It is very clear, just from the first few pages, that Goyal has a very clear political viewpoint on poverty and its causes and potential remedies. And, in honesty, that viewpoint isn’t much different than my own. But the author’s judgements and beliefs infiltrate so much of the narration that his writing quickly begins to sound biased and, because of this, I finished this book feeling as if I hadn’t really heard the full story.

Since the author has a background in sociology I was expecting an objective look at the lives of these three boys that focuses primarily on their own perspectives and actions. Instead, the continuous insertions of Goyal’s own impressions and assumptions made me feel like he was writing the story of these teens so that it would fit into his own social commentary instead of the other way around. His constant explanations and defenses of their actions felt annoying and unnecessary, as if he was unable to trust the reader to draw these same conclusions on their own.

Sadly, this book just feels like another product of our current era, an era that is so polarized that no story - especially one as important and complicated as this one - can be told from an impartial and neutral perspective. When we look at poverty and similar suffering in America, I believe we need to find a midpoint between blaming the victims and the erasure of personal responsibility. Even more, we need to find a way to stop pointing fingers so that we can create common ground and work together. Live to See the Day does address a few of these issues. I was just hoping for a book that would address them all.

[Carol · Rating 5 out of 5]

I do not agree with reviewers who saying this book is boring! To me this book tells the reality of being poor, discriminated against, not having secure housing and food! Hearing gun shots, seeing discarded needles on the sidewalk, mold on the walls, rat and cockroach infestation are situations that depress, make a person feel hopeless. I do not understand how people do not understand that.

This book follows three young men from birth and their families, a lot of people have only one or two barriers that they experienced. They had many barriers to not succeeding. I know that it really helps to have a parent who you can count on for emotional support and instruction. I did not see that in three families. There was drug addiction, alcoholism and what can of job can you get without a high school diploma to come up against. And child care credit, is elusive. I remember child care taking a lot of my check, and my son did not like the organized care. We only qualified one year for the child care credit, it was a pittance of what I had to pay. Affordable and enriched activities would really help. That is my experience. I did not experience hearing gunshots when rowing up, I did accidently step on a mouse when walking in the dark. I remember some boys in class who got no help for their ADHD, they were constantly disciplined but never were the police were calls, for they were white. I hope that is much more help today. There needs to be constrictive help for girls who have been raped by their close relatives, children who have lost their parents to drugs, alcohol or prison, children who are gay, transsexual need support. I cannot understand why people do not think that is important.

How can the poor be blamed for a high carb or junk food diet if they live in a food desert? There needs to be places where people can safely garden to raise fruits and vegetables, there is no place to do that in poor section of a city. There need to be safe havens for children in libraries. My son had this temporarily and it really helped.

I had so many reactions to this books, it brought back memories of growing in the city, I was in an all white neighborhood, but the most of the people were poor. We have a sense of neighborhood and that helped. We all need a good neighborhood.

I have had the rare experience of being the white going to summer school in an all black school i the city. I discovered that the textbooks were fifty years old and very worn. Therefore I believe a lot in this book.

[Richard Thompson · Rating 3 out of 5]

The stories in this book are moving biographies of young people growing up in poverty who face terrible problems in a system that is stacked against them. They try to find ways to build meaningful lives and human relationships, to get educated, and to help their families, but every time they turn around, they hit a wall. They get kicked out of school, they have run-ins with the police, they are raped or shot or stabbed. Basic food, clothing and shelter are sometimes missing. It is an old sad story, and we have been letting it go on for years in our country without doing much to fix the problems. And after the hopeful efforts to fight poverty in the 60s, we have taken some giant steps in the wrong direction.

The stories here are very personal. It's impossible to read these stories and have no compassion for these young people. Just a little bit more help could do wonders to make their lives better. To me it was nothing new. I don't want more anecdotes. I want action. I'd rather read a book that points more in the direction of solutions. It's not that this book is poverty porn, though at times it has elements of that. I do think that it is important for conservative groups and self-satisfied rich folks to see that the people who suffer in urban poverty are human beings, real people with real lives who are not lazy or criminal and are trying hard to improve their lot. Maybe books like this can help, but in my reading, I'd rather focus more what we can be doing to fix the problems that I already know are there.

[Jennifer · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book follows three kids living in Philadelphia. Each of them has to navigate the multiple and sustained challenges of poverty, and highlighting those challenges is author's intention. In particular, he wants to examine the pipeline to prison for children of color.

Last year I read Invisible Child by Andrea Elliott, which is similar narrative nonfiction about a girl and her family in New York. Elliott focuses on housing insecurity, and I thought that the prison pipeline in the Philadelphia account also has an origin story in each kid's experiences with housing insecurity (e.g. housing insecurity led the kids to move around. They'd miss school or be tardy, which would get them expelled and sent to "last chances" schools, which were filled with violence. They'd drop out and get involved in selling drugs. Then they'd get arrested...).

This book didn't really have a satisfying conclusion. Ultimately, the author wants to suggest that we could do things differently in the United States (e.g. fiscally support housing, health care, child care etc. as rights). Maybe the repetition of that discussion will make it more palatable to voters, but so far I don't see that kind of change as a viable course of action in this political climate. So I came away feeling pretty hopeless.

The storytelling in this book is a little odd, mostly because the timeline jumps back and forth through decades and then ends in 2017. The data and sources come across as somewhat dated as a result.

[Julie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wasn't sure what to expect from this book, a little concerned it might be "poverty porn" drawing out the miseries of food and housing insecurity with little humanization. The publisher may have teased that assumption with this sub heading, but that's not at all what the book achieves. In closely following the lives of these young people, with very little indulgence into the minutiae of the misery of being poor, the focus instead is on the larger, more structural injustices associated with poverty.

The moment I found most shocking in this book was not when the school called the police on child following a prank (the prank itself was potentially dangerous and perhaps the school, lacking personnel, had no resources besides city services, if we're being generous to those who made the decision). What I found shocking was that when the child was finally able to call his mother from juvenile detention more than a day later, the mother was in a state of panic not knowing where her son was. The school who had called the police on a child, the school who had legal responsibility for the child during school hours, had not notified the mother of the incident (and presumably had not responded to the mother's questions when searching for her child).

That one incident to me felt like the ultimate description of poverty in the U.S., the intersection of injustice and powerlessness.

[Sara Broad · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nikhil Goyal's "Live to See the Day" centers around three teenagers who grow up in Kensington, a marginalized community in the northern part of Philadelphia. Mass incarceration, substandard housing, poverty, and urban blight are just a few of the themes that are part of the painful reality of the lives of many Philadelphia, especially its young people. Goyal does a great job using Emmanuel, Giancarlos, and Ryan's experiences in Philadelphia's chronically underfunded schools as a cause for and effect of poverty. Too many students who live in poverty have heard that they aren't doing well because they don't care, but the abuses of poverty that underscore every facet of the lives of these three teenagers and what they do to obtain a high school education discredits all negative assumptions. I liked how Goyal takes the narratives a step further by providing a history of the rise and fall of Philadelphia's industrial sector and uses other sources to show the conditions that have created lives filled with much hardship. This is a really good read and is especially relevant if you are a Philadelphian.

[Lisa Weldy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very important read about the state of education and how it affects kids in very low socio-economic homes. I enjoyed getting to really know the boys in this book, and understanding more how generational trauma can impact a family for many decades.

I think this book could've been trimmed down a touch--a tighter edit was needed in my opinion. While I did enjoy the in-depth writing style, there were times when there was just too much unnecessary description. Not everything needed to be spelled out or detailed, especially some of the more mundane details.

Overall, I think this book is a well-written account of how the cards are stacked against so many who were born into certain socioeconomic circumstances. While this book focuses on areas in Philadelphia, this is clearly a national issue.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me an advanced reader copy in exchange for my honest review.

[Eileen · Rating 4 out of 5]

True coming of age story of three boys growing up in the Kensington section of Philadelphia. Heartbreaking and very slightly hopeful. No easy answers.

" Cram explained that the police had become the Band-Aid for all the economic and social ills in the community. To understand crime. he said, you need to understand the underlying conditions, which generate a perfect storm: poverty, hunger, unemployment, cheap heroin, low graduation rates, high incarceration rates, and the breakdown of the family structure...."Mass incarceration does not work. There needs to be a comprehensive, nonnarcotics-related treatment program. As journalist Jill Leovy pointed out, communities of color have been over policed for trivial offenses and underpoliced for deadly, violent crimes. If targeting low-level drug users and dealers wasn't a priority, this would free up resources for the police to tackle the more serious problem of violent crime."

[Akhshaya]

“Ryan Rivera, Emmanuel Coreano, and Giancarlos Rodriguez- the three children at the heart of Live to See the Day-came of age in the new neoliberal era. With everything stacked against them, they strive to do the impossible: to jettison the scarlet letter of "dropout" and become high school graduates. Each would enroll in an alternative "last chance" high school called El Centro de Estudiantes. Although they overlapped at times, they didn't cross paths or know each other well. The book also follows their mothers, Rayni, Ivette, and Marta, in the process tracing the history of Puerto Rican migration, deindustrialization, the war on drugs, and the end of welfare as we know it, revealing how American society punishes low-income single parents and makes it almost impossible to raise children with their self-worth intact. Together, they chronicle a tale of a metropolis and the nation from the bottom up.”

[Elyssa · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book reminded me of one of my all time favorites 'Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bronx', which I read 20 years ago and have never forgotten. 'Live to See the Day' traces the lives three young men and their families as they try to survive extreme poverty and crime in the Kensington neighborhood of North Philadelphia. It's a solid indictment against the flawed American philosophy of pulling oneself up by your bootstraps without the security of a safe neighborhood, good public schools, and economic opportunities. The heroes of this story are the tenacious young men, the devoted staff a progressive alternative school (which almost closes multiple times due to lack of funding), a forgiving and understanding judge, and DA Larry Krasner who reminds us that poverty is not a crime. Some reviews say that this book is hard to follow, but I became so engrossed in these stories that I never noticed that.

[Charles Bookman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nikhil Goyal in “Live to See the Day” shares the life journeys of young people in the poorest corners of Philadelphia as they struggle to complete high school. The deck is stacked against them—they live in poor housing, in food deserts, surrounded by drugs and hostile police. The school system stifles creativity more than it educates. That they find their way at all borders on the incredible. The travails of these young people are hard to wrap your brain around, but it is important that we try to do so. The author became a policy advisor to Senator Bernie Sanders, where he has been an architect of many of the Senator’s socially progressive proposals to share America’s wealth more equitably, which have been at the heart of Sen. Sanders’ political campaigns. Read more at bookmanreader.blogspot.com .

[Sam Hughes · Rating 5 out of 5]

AGH! This was so well done and I'm so thankful to Macmillan Audio, Netgalley, and Nikhil Goyal for granting me advanced audiobook access to this grotesquely horrific depiction of America's impoverished communities, being dealt very little and even less as time goes on. With politicians touting Pro-Life sanctions left and right, it's pretty corrupt given how government and the system it runs couldn't get a rat's ass about children growing up and getting handed around from bandaid fix to another.

I think this was really sad, but also really informative of how things are set up, unfortunately. I think everyone should listen or at least read this book, because it was so profound.

Live to See the Day hits shelves on August 22, 2023.

[Dave G · Rating 2 out of 5]

There are many great books in this genre but this is not one of them. The book was very flat throughout. I know this is a nonfiction book about serious matters but the author just could not write in a way that made me engaged. I have read many books on topics such as this. I don’t always agree with the author’s point of view but at least I try to see where they are coming from. This book was so dry I had to skim rather than read the end of the book.

I think it is important to know how our cities, states and country is adapting to change as well as the new social policies that left and right are trying to implement. This book could not engage me and therefore could not impress upon me any way to change or to improve. Sad if you ask me.

[Jamie Park · Rating 5 out of 5]

I picked this up because the sociologist in me needs to know about things like social security payouts, racism, underfunded schools, and just about anything else that affects our society.
This book hit all the spots for me.
I loved how they introduced us to the boys and told us their story, while also introducing us to their parents and communities.
There is a theme of teen pregnancy and jobs that do not pay a living wage, as well as housing that isn't stable. We, as country, know how to fix these things but we opt not to.
I already have three friends in mind I will be recommending this book to.

[Cindy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Remarkable documentary of the education and coming of age of 3 young Latinos growing up in the Kensington neighborhood in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The author skillfully weaves details of each boy’s life story together with well-researched background about the politics of education funding, housing, policing and corrections in the area and other poverty stricken areas. The daily challenges each boy faced were vividly depicted. This book makes a compelling case for equity in education, housing, child care, mental health and all other resources for all communities lacking adequate resources. Unparalleled classic. A must read for all, particularly people in positions of power.

[Bearhands · Rating 5 out of 5]

A powerful study on poverty and inequality in one of America’s most marginalized urban neighborhoods. Goyal masterfully shares the story of three Puerto Rican young people navigating Philly’s Kensington neighborhood. Goyal respectfully explores their stories while speaking to the institutional failures that permit over-incarceration, criminal activity, and food/housing insecurity. Truly a call to action for lawmakers and communities to proactively make massive policy changes. A very important book, and while it highlights Philadelphia, it speaks to people all over the U.S. High recommendation!

[Steve · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am biased. I grew up in Kensington, although 1961-1978 was a bit more civilized and survivable than it is today. My father had his business on the corner of Rorer & Ontario, one block between Hartville and McVeigh center. Corem's stomping ground. We were poor thinking we were middle class. But not poor like these 3. There's a soft place in my heart for them and a standing ovation for their success. This is a book that needs to be read, needs to be shared. It should be required reading for all of our government officials. But then again I live in Florida now, so this book will probably get banned............ Ouch!

[Sophia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Live to see the day: Coming of age in American Poverty is an apt title for Nikhil Goyal's account of the lives of three poor children in Philadelphia's Kensington neighborhood, which has gained notoriety in recent years as an epicenter of the drug overdose epidemic. The storyline seems to switch abruptly between Ryan, Emmanuel, and Giancarlos but the persistent theme is how poverty destabilizes their lives and schools fail them. Goyal lets their stories do the arguing for him, for Bernie-backed causes (He worked for Bernie in the past). This was an interesting read, especially after watching the PBS series Philly DA about Larry Krasner's first term.

[Cassidy · Rating 3 out of 5]

For a book I had to read for school, it wasn’t that bad. Some parts were extremely interesting given I grew up not far from the places studied. But the book didn’t have a steady pace. I thought the jumping around was messy and led to confusion where the story could’ve been written in a different order for better comprehension. For people who haven’t thought of or the seen the world in this way, it’s a very provocative book. For people who have seen this way of life, it feels pretty common sense-y. Overall, not bad.