Good Kings, Bad Kings is the winner of the PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction - and deservedly so.
This novel tells the stories, in a series of alternating voices, of the residents and staff of the Illinois Learning and Life Skills Centre - an institution for juveniles with disabilities in Chicago. They are stories of hopes and dreams, of desire for love, for independence, for respect; they are stories of friendship, love and caring despite the odds.
Whether the perspective was from a 'resident' or from a 'staffer' - those feelings are the same. It is also a story of life in a nursing home and the truly horrible conditions that people are forced to endure when desire for profit outweighs desire for caring.
The author uses the book as a platform to shed light onto the challenges faced daily by kids like these. She provides us with some hope in the form of caring staff members, but she does not sugar-coat the dim reality that is faced by disabled youth who have no one to care for them.
Susan Nussbaum succeeds in raising questions of institutionalization by giving a voice to those who are themselves institutionalized.
Since I put this book down I find myself thinking about it often. I would most certainly recommend it and would happily read more by this author.
This novel tells the stories, in a series of alternating voices, of the residents and staff of the Illinois Learning and Life Skills Centre - an institution for juveniles with disabilities in Chicago. They are stories of hopes and dreams, of desire for love, for independence, for respect; they are stories of friendship, love and caring despite the odds.
Whether the perspective was from a 'resident' or from a 'staffer' - those feelings are the same. It is also a story of life in a nursing home and the truly horrible conditions that people are forced to endure when desire for profit outweighs desire for caring.
The author uses the book as a platform to shed light onto the challenges faced daily by kids like these. She provides us with some hope in the form of caring staff members, but she does not sugar-coat the dim reality that is faced by disabled youth who have no one to care for them.
Susan Nussbaum succeeds in raising questions of institutionalization by giving a voice to those who are themselves institutionalized.
Since I put this book down I find myself thinking about it often. I would most certainly recommend it and would happily read more by this author.
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