Bronwyn Harris, Author

A book I read a long time ago is called There Are No Children Here .  I'm fuzzy on the details, but it's about a rough neighborhood in Chicago, I believe, and the title comes from a mother who says that there are no children here - and goes on to explain how people who have seen and experienced the violence that her kids have aren't children anymore because you can't experience that and still be a child. I see this with kids and teenagers in Oakland, a lot.  When I was teaching this was really obvious.  A six-year old told me once that he had to walk his five-year old brother home because "My mama says I'm grown now."  other kids were being raised by their older siblings or older cousins, who should have been in college, figuring out who they were, not raising difficult young children who had been abandoned. In my new job, I'm seeing this a lot.  Our staff is mostly made up of teenagers, and many of them are the parental figures of their families.