Wrong Place, Wrong Time: Trauma and Violence in the Lives of Young Black Men
Search in google:
Medical school taught John A. Rich how to deal with physical trauma in a big city hospital but not with the disturbing fact that young black men were daily shot, stabbed, and beaten. This is Rich's account of his personal search to find sense in the juxtaposition of his life and theirs.Young black men in cities are overwhelmingly the victims — and perpetrators — of violent crime in the United States. Troubled by this tragedy — and by his medical colleagues' apparent numbness in the face of it — Rich, a black man who grew up in relative safety and comfort, reached out to many of these young crime victims to learn why they lived in a seemingly endless cycle of violence and how it affected them. The stories they told him are unsettling — and revealing about the reality of life in American cities.Mixing his own perspective with their seldom-heard voices, Rich relates the stories of young black men whose lives were violently disrupted — and of their struggles to heal and remain safe in an environment that both denied their trauma and blamed them for their injuries. He tells us of people such as Roy, a former drug dealer who fought to turn his life around and found himself torn between the ease of returning to the familiarity of life on the violent streets of Boston and the tenuous promise of accepting a new, less dangerous one.Rich's poignant portrait humanizes young black men and illustrates the complexity of a situation that defies easy answers and solutions.The Washington Post - Colbert I. King…those of us who spend time tracking violence and its impact on every aspect of life in urban America—as well as anyone with an ounce of humanity—ought to be thrilled to see a book like Wrong Place, Wrong Time come along. It looks beyond the gunplay, offering a window on urban violence by putting faces with the cold statistics and presenting stories in the victims' own words. The author, John A. Rich…comes to the subject from the vantage point of having worked on the problem at ground zero. As a primary-care physician at Boston City Hospital, known for its care of poor folks, especially those of color, Rich saw the wounds and scars of young black patients at the height of the time when shooting victims were arriving at the emergency room with the regularity of sunrise. Although set in Boston, Wrong Place, Wrong Time could have been written about young black men in Washington, Baltimore, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Chicago or Los Angeles.
Introduction 11 Kari in Pain 62 Roy in Prerelease 243 Jimmy in the Hospital 394 Jimmy in the Street 685 In the Wrong Place 736 A Stone in the Heart 837 Roy in D.C. 1118 Kari in the Clinic 1249 Mark in the Neighborhood 13610 Kari in His Grandmother's House 14511 Jimmy in Jail 15112 Roy in the Pizzeria 17013 Roy Back in Touch 17914 Roy Settles In 185Conclusion 196Epilogue 202Acknowledgments 207Note on Sources 211
