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  • Unequal Fortunes: Snapshots from the South Bronx
  • Beth Hatt
Arthur Levine and Laura Scheiber. Unequal Fortunes: Snapshots from the South Bronx. New York: Teachers College Press, 2010. 170 pp. Paper: $25.95. ISBN-13: 978-0-8077-5075-9.

Award-winning anthropologist Ruth Behar (1996) states, “Anthropology that doesn’t break your heart just isn’t worth doing anymore” (p.177). Arthur Levine and Laura Schreiber have followed Behar’s advice in their book, Unequal Fortunes. They provide a street-level perspective of life in the South Bronx through the words and experiences of the people who have lived there and those who continue to do so. The book concludes by tying lived experience to policy on many levels and depicting the ways they are interrelated. Through reading the stories, policy becomes personal and the vulnerability of living in urban poverty is revealed.

Arthur Levine lays the groundwork for the book’s premise by describing his return to the apartment in which he grew up in the South Bronx and which he had not visited for 30 years. He discovered that his old bedroom now belonged to 14-year-old Carlos from the Dominican Republic. Carlos’s bed and dresser were in the exact location that Levine’s had been. Arthur Levine became fascinated at the possibility of understanding his old neighborhood 30+ years later through the eyes of a young man who now lived in his old apartment, slept in his old bedroom, and observed the neighborhood through his old bedroom window.

Arthur and his research associate, Laura Scheiber, who is bilingual in English and Spanish, embarked on a decade-long research study to better understand the decline of U.S. inner cities, the impact of poverty, and the possibilities of urban renewal by exploring the lived experience of these issues through Carlos and his two best friends, Juan Carlos and Leo. The authors compare the experiences of these Latino teenagers with those of Arthur as a young Jewish teenager in the same neighborhood three decades earlier.

Carlos, Juan Carlos, and Leo agreed to keep diaries of their daily lives for five years. When Leo was shot and killed by a police officer in 2005, the study became more personal. Levine and Schreiber focused on his life and death to represent the harsh realities of Levine’s old neighborhood today.

The first part of the book details the context of Arthur’s youth, including his family, the neighborhood, and his schooling experiences. Arthur’s family included a two-parent household, Jewish traditions, and high expectations for academic and economic success. The neighborhood was largely White and working class with 36% of the population being immigrants from Eastern Europe, especially Russia and Poland.

The community was close-knit with neighborhood parents keeping an eye on each other’s children and reporting any misbehavior immediately. Arthur describes the community as having a common “belief in the power of education and a commitment to the American dream” (p. 30). The older kids in the neighborhood provided evidence that the dream was possible by becoming teachers, lawyers, and doctors.

Part 1 concludes by discussing Arthur’s departure from the Bronx to attend college in Massachussetts. Upward class mobility meant he would not return to live in the same neighborhood once he graduated. He chose education as a career because of his belief that “education is the only effective way to improve the world” and the best way to give low-income kids a chance to escape poverty (p. 38).

Levine did not return to New York City for 28 years, when he became president of Teachers College. The changes he found in his former neighborhood gave him a profound sense of loss. The neighborhood had more graffiti and trash. Broken glass, the occasional used condom, and empty crack vials littered the street. The children living in the neighborhood were mostly Latino, low income, and living with single parents, many of whom worked long hours to survive. Arthur felt that, due to many structural issues such as White flight, “planned shrinkage,” a lack of bank investment, and under-resourced schools, the American Dream had died in his old neighborhood.

Part 2 introduces...

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