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What Is The Relationship Between Kozol The Homeless And Their Children

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Bright twinkling Christmas lights are hung from every tree and building. Marvelous and extravagant red and green decorations adorn the streets, stores, and homes. Shining Christmas trees are filled with personalized family ornaments. Laura looks at families with smiling and cheerful children, who could not be any more excited for Christmas to come. Laura arrives home to reality, she glances at the empty cotton stockings attached to the wall and the vacant space in the living room where the tree is supposed to be with overflowing presents scattered around the room and children with smiling and happy faces. Holding back tears, Laura looks at her four children all under the age of seven, with hollow and dark faces, wanting so badly to understand what it is like to wake up to presents on Christmas morning. She thinks to herself, how am I supposed to provide them with a magical Christmas, if my apartment has crumbling plaster, a pool of sewage on the bathroom floor, a broken radiator valve, only cheese, bread, and peanut butter as food, and my kitchen table is covered in piles of medical papers and bills, which I cannot read? In “The Homeless and Their Children” by Jonathon Kozol, Kozol investigates the lives of the homeless in order to demonstrate the link between illiteracy and poverty. Kozol provides a story of a homeless woman, Laura, who lives in a welfare hotel, the Martinique Hotel, with her four children, all under the age of seven. The author goes into great

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