From Powells.com
Staff Pick
This is one of the most important books I've ever read. Each chapter profiles the life of a child killed by gun violence on the same randomly selected day in America, 11/23/13. Younge is quick to point out that this isn't a book about gun control; instead, it's a book about what happens when gun control is nonexistent in a country where poverty, racism, and segregation are endemic. Younge's 10 subjects are kids whose deaths would have gone minimally reported, if at all, and whose grieving parents and friends would have been left voiceless if not for his reporting. And this happens an average of 7 times a day, 365 days a year! Another Day forced me to look at the ways that economic inequality and structural racism rob millions of kids of safe, stable childhoods, and as a result leave thousands of them victim to the lure and violence of guns. It doesn't matter where you stand on gun ownership; none of us should be content to live in a country with so many young ghosts. Recommended By Rhianna W., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
On an average day in America, seven young people, aged nineteen or under, will be shot dead. In Another Day in the Death of America, award-winning Guardian journalist Gary Younge tells the stories of the lives lost on one random day—November 23, 2013. Ten children died that day. From Jaiden Dixon, nine, shot point-blank by his mother’s ex-boyfriend on his doorstep in suburban Ohio, to Tyshon Anderson, an eighteen-year-old gang member who’d recently been released from prison on Chicago’s South Side; from a rural hamlet in Michigan to the deindustrialized streets of Newark, the narrative crisscrosses the country over a period of twenty-four hours to reveal the stories behind the statistics and brief mentions in local papers.
This powerful and moving work puts a human face—a child’s face—on the "collateral damage" of gun violence at a time when the gun issue in America is being hotly debated. This is not a book about gun control, but about what happens in a country where it does not exist. What emerges in these pages is a searing portrait of youth and family in America today.
Review
"Another Day in the Death of America is the kind of book that instantly changes you. There's no way to walk away from these ten stories of children who were all victims of gun violence on the same day and not feel the heat of anger and despair about the gun culture that creates a seemingly inescapable cycle of violence in America. Gary Younge trains his considerable talents on one day, that could have been any of our bullet and blood filled days, and sketches the lives of the real people who suffer so much for our inability to act. We need to know them." Mychal Denzel Smith, author of Invisible Man Got The Whole World Watching
Review
"This book is a righteous challenge to the big insanities of American society: gun ubiquity, racism, poverty, and the supine and bland media that taboos genuine discourse on them. It's all the more daring and subversive for its controlled and mannered tone as it breaks the unwritten law: thou shall not humanize the victims of this ongoing carnage." Irvine Welsh, author of Trainspotting
Review
"Gary Younge's Another Day in the Death of America is a harrowing account of children s lives cut short by the ubiquity of violence in the United States. Drawn from suburbs and cities of every demographic, these sensitively researched portraits of virtually unknown victims and their grieving families expose the structural ties of race, class, and lack of gun control. Younge's book completes the picture of what violence looks like in contemporary America, and should be required reading for anyone naming themselves American." Claudia Rankine, author of Citizen
Review
"This is Gary Younge's masterwork: you will never read news reports about gun violence the same way again. Brilliantly reported, quietly indignant and utterly gripping. A book to be read through tears." Naomi Klein, author of This Changes Everything and The Shock Doctrine
Review
"[Younge provides] nuance and context to a polarizing issue. The personal touches, however, are most affecting, as Younge pieces together each story from news reports and interviews with friends and family, weaving a tragic narrative of wasted potential." Publishers Weekly
About the Author
Gary Younge, an Alfred Knobler Fellow at the Nation Institute, is an award-winning columnist for the Guardian and Nation and an acclaimed author. In 2009 he won the British James Cameron award for his coverage of the 2008 presidential election, and in 2015 he won the Foreign Commentator of the Year Award. His most recent book is The Speech: The Story Behind Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s Dream. His previous books include Who Are We and Should it Matter in the Twenty-First Century?, Stranger in a Strange Land: Encounters in the Disunited States, and No Place Like Home: A Black Briton's Journey through the American South. Formerly the Belle Zeller Visiting Professor of public policy and social administration at Brooklyn College, CUNY, he has two honorary degrees from British universities.