The Corner :
A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood
by david simon, Edward Burns
Synopsis:
From the prize-winning author of "Homicide" and a former
police detective comes the searing, heart-stopping true story of
one of America's most crime-ridden neighborhoods and a family struggling
to survive there.
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Today, he is taller, his baby fat is gone and he is shy, running to his
room rather than talk about what saved him from the gas.
His uncle, Jerome Jack, 40, talks for him. "He was over at [the]
treatment program for youth for four or five months. Pien learned about
his own culture and how to stabilize his own life. And how to identify
himself as an Innu." Pien, Jerome Jack is saying, felt abandoned by his
parents. "Pien wanted his mother to stop drinking."
When Pien does talk, the words are often unsettling. "A lot of kids
still sniff now," he said. "I don't know where."
In the settlement's school, Ann Hurley, the Innu vice principal, sits
behind her desk and talks of the trouble the sniffers created. "Some
used to run around the school and run outside in the trees," Hurley
said. "They used to hang around, hang around the school, hang around
throwing rocks at the windows."
But when the children were sent off, the school cracked down, too.
"When we could smell gas on the child's clothing, we contacted the
parents and sent them home. . . . When parents are drinking, you know
how it is, the kids don't sleep. There is no food at home. That is why
some were having problems."
Hurley says she hasn't had to send anyone home in quite a while. But
she can see the effects of the gas on the children now, even after the
smell has gone. "They are really slow at learning."
Hard Habit to Break
Irene Penunsi is one of the failed ones. She still roams the streets,
moving in and out of the woods, in and out of jail. People point at her
and say she is influencing the younger people. Penunsi wears her hair in
two braids. She is a mother, of a 9-month-old girl who has been taken
away from her.
For Penunsi...»»
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