Urban Sociology - General & Miscellaneous, Education - At-Risk Children, Rural & Urban Settings

On the Outside Looking In

Name: On the Outside Looking In
Author: Cristina Rathbone
ISBN: 9780871137364

by Cristina Rathbone

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Overview

This is the story of inner-city kids who come from poverty, dysfunctional homes, and drug-riddled neighborhoods; of an underfunded high school and its devoted principal who represent their last slim connection to mainstream society; and of a young reporter who crossed over into this other America to participate in the wrenching complexities of their lives. Cristina Rathbone spent a year at New York City's West Side High School. Hanging out with the kids in classrooms and in the halls, on street corners and in gang meetings, she gets to know the hidden narratives of their lives and comes to admire their courage and dazzling cool. There is Rasheem, for example, a gifted artist whose extravagant wardrobe is a cover for his homelessness and poverty; Roland, whose menagerie of reptiles has earned him a reputation as the "Dr. Doolittle of the South Bronx"; and Sandra, a bright Latina who finds an outlet for her ambition only by joining one of the city's largest youth gangs. And then there is Manny Martinez, a charming, soft-spoken drug dealer who has always wanted to be a refrigerator repairman, but who eventually ends up in prison. Moving beyond the role of a journalist to that of a potential caregiver, Rathbone must soon confront not only West Side's limitations but her own.

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Editorials

Francine Prose

On the Outside Looking In is an important and moving work, instructive and eye-opening in the most essential and valuable ways. -- New York Observer

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

This poignant account of teenagers attending a last-chance high school is a depressing confirmation of the entrenched isolation of poverty. Rathbone, a freelance journalist living in New York City, spent a year hanging out with students, mostly Hispanic and African American, assigned by the educational bureaucracy to classrooms fashioned out of abandoned office space in midtown Manhattan. The 750-plus students came from all over the city; their parents were often jobless drug addicts and alcoholics. The author recounts the day-to-day experiences of youngsters that drove them to become gang members and street hustlers. Rathbone becomes profoundly depressed, as does the reader, as she tries to befriend and help these troubled kids. Offering no solutions of her own, she takes solace from the fact that 85 of the kids obtained a diploma. The role of the teachers in this achievement is largely omitted here, although Rathbone spent a lot of time attending student discussion sessions run by the school principal, Ed Reynolds, himself a tragic figure who refuses to be beaten down by the system. (Feb.)

Library Journal

Curious about the lives of inner-city teenagers, journalist Rathbone, who has written for the New York Daily News and the Miami Herald, decided to spend the 1994-95 school year as an observer in New York's West Side High School, composed largely of students that even the worst schools had rejected. Throughout the school year, Rathbone spent time in Principal Ed Reynolds's "Family Group," a sort of daily homeroom/discussion period at the school. Ed's group contained some of the worst students. Rathbone could relate to a number of the kids, having grown up in an at-risk situation herself, but the lives of many others at West Side often overwhelmed her. Rathbone's book is about more than education. Along with detailing the daily lives of the students, she provides history and information about New York City neighborhoodsthe gangs, drugs, depressionas well as insight into a world many readers would like to believe doesn't exist. Recommended for most libraries, especially those with an emphasis on education.Terry Christner, Hutchinson P.L., Kan.

Booknews

The author spends a year studying New York City's West Side High School, observing the lives of the disadvantaged youths that make up its student body, and the educators who try to offer them a way out of the crime, drugs, and poverty that are endemic to their surroundings. The author observes the kids' varying ways of coping with their difficult circumstances, discussing their flirtations with involvement in gangs and drug dealing, as well as their romances, love of animals, and the experience of a group of 14 students chosen to go on a ten-week trip to work on an Israeli kibbutz. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.