Review by Choice Review
Bernstein (New York Times) tells the story of the landmark class action suit filed in 1973 by the New York Civil Liberties Union on behalf of dependent and neglected children of color in New York City. The suit charged 77 nonprofit child welfare agencies and a number of city and state officials with discrimination against black children by placement practices that denied those children services in the mainly sectarian private child welfare system, which gave preference to white children and those whose religious affiliations matched those of the agencies. These practices existed despite the fact that private agencies provided most of the publicly funded child welfare services in the city. At the center of the story is Shirley Wilder, the named plaintiff in the case, who was 14 when she entered the system and who died at age 39, just before Wilder v. Sugarman was settled in 1999. The result of Bernstein's meticulous research and eloquent writing is a book that is at once fascinating and compelling, devastating and haunting. It should be required reading for students of the law and social welfare policy and would be of great interest to informed general readers. B. A. Pine University of Connecticut
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
As a new administration prepares to implement "compassionate conservatism," urging that "faith-based organizations" know better than government how to help the nation's poor and imperiled people, three valuable studies offer other perspectives. Award-winning journalist Bernstein--who is now with the New York Times but was with New York Newsday when she took up the Wilder case--supplies the most devastating critique of this "new" social service philosophy. Like Dickens' Jarndyce v. Jarndyce, Wilder moved through the New York state courts for nearly three decades. A 1972 class action lawsuit filed by the state Civil Liberties Union, Wilder challenged delegation of responsibility for care of abused and neglected children to private agencies. Most New York agencies were Catholic or Jewish and were permitted by law to give preference to children of their own faith, condemning the mostly Protestant African American children who dominated the system to overcrowded, underfunded state institutions. Bernstein blends legal history and public policy history with the tragic story of Shirley Wilder, the case's "name" plaintiff. A timely reminder that good intentions and religious beliefs don't always solve social problems. Coles and Cottle assemble eloquent descriptions, from very different sources, of how it feels to be poor or "in peril." Coles and his associates turn to literature for their testimony about the recognition of poverty, the experience of denigration, the visceral reality of working long hours for miserable pay, and the rare but precious "moments of resolve and resiliency." Their contributors include Langston Hughes and William Carlos Williams, Sandra Cisneros and Sherman Alexie, Dorothy Allison and Sylvia Watanabe, Zora Neale Hurston and Raymond Carver, and Ralph Ellison and Richard Ford. The subjects of Boston University sociologist Cottle's narratives don't have equally familiar names, but many readers will relate to their experiences. Cottle uses the "life study" or "story sociology" technique that he has developed over the decades to examine individuals' experience of being "at risk" --of health problems, within the family, in school, and in society at large. Children and senior citizens, those who need help and those who provide it, offer their stories. In his introduction and afterword, Cottle explores the links between peril and injustice, and discusses the methodological issues raised by his approach. --Mary Carroll
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In this first-rate investigation, New York Times reporter Bernstein explores the genesis and aftermath of the landmark 1973 legal case filed by young ACLU attorney Marcia Lowry against the New York State foster-care system. Known as Wilder for its 14-year-old African-American plaintiff, Shirley "Pinky" Wilder, the suit claimed Jewish and Catholic child welfare services had a lock on foster care funding and placements. Like Susan Sheehan in Life for Me Ain't Been No Crystal Stair, Bernstein illuminates broader social issues through the story of Shirley; Lamont, the son she bore at 14; and Lamont's young sonDall graduates of New York's hellish child welfare system. The tale is gut-wrenchingly DickensianDall the more so because, as Bernstein shows, the well-meaning 19th-century Jewish and Catholic philanthropists, clerics and parents who founded and expanded the child welfare system in New York ultimately deprived huge numbers of children of their legal and human rights as the demographics of New York changed. It took 25 years and many more lawsuits before the reforms mandated by Wilder began to be realized. In the interim, Lamont endured the same excruciating experiences his mother had suffered, including physical and sexual abuse, homelessness, witnessing the deaths of other children in foster care and losing his own child to the foster care system. A crack addict, Shirley died of AIDS at 40. Despite these horrors, the book ends with the hopeful postscript that Lamont's son currently lives with his mother, Kisha, and visits his now self-supporting father on weekends. Ten years in the making, this viscerally powerful history of institutionalized child abuse and the criminalization of poverty, of civil rights and social change, is compelling and essential reading. Agent, Gloria Loomis. (Feb. 28) Forecast: Like Jonathan Kozol's Savage Inequalities, this book has the potential to jumpstart a national conversation about the failings of our social safety net for impoverished children. If it garners the review attention it deserves, it will find a solid audience among readers of Kozol's and Sheehan's books. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
This book is a fascinating history of 28 years of change in the child foster care system in New York City, where sectarian interests controlled the placement of homeless, neglected, abused, and emotionally disturbed children and adolescents. The book follows the lives of lead plaintiff Shirley Wilder and her son as Shirley goes from homeless preteen to teenage mother at 14 and is shifted from home to foster home to group home to institution. Her son grows up in foster care and institutions. The book simultaneously follows a 1986 federal lawsuit, which became known as Wilder, brought on behalf of foster care children in New York City by the ACLU Children's Rights Project. New York Times reporter Bernstein conducted extensive interviews of many of the participants for this book, which is compelling both for its elucidation of child welfare practices and for its demonstration of how litigation can affect social policy. A necessary purchase for New York State academic and larger public libraries and a very useful one for social welfare and policy collections nationwide.DMary Jane Brustman, Univ. at Albany Libs., NY (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
In 1973, the ACLU filed a suit on behalf of Shirley Wilder, a 13-year-old black girl who had been placed in foster care in New York. The citys foster care system, they charged, was utterly corrupt: It farmed out public bed space to private Jewish and Catholic agencies that favored Jewish and Catholic (which also usually meant white) children, while black, Protestant kids like Wilder fell through the cracks. In her fast-paced narrative, Bernstein introduces us to Wilder, her son Lamont (whom she placed in foster care while still in foster care herself), the judge who first heard the case, the probation officer, the head of New Yorks Special Services for Children, and the tender-hearted and strong-willed nun who cared for Lamont. Marcia Lowry, the neurotic and compassionate lawyer who took on Wilders case, steals the show, claiming more of the readers attention than Wilder herself. Were taken into schools, convents, hospitals, and, of course, courtroomssometimes (but too infrequently) this story even takes us into homes. A fast-paced and vivid account of a domestic nightmare.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
Review by Booklist Review
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Review by Library Journal Review
Review by Kirkus Book Review