In this new book, Dr. John Rich, Director of the Center for Nonviolence & Social Justice, relates the stories of young black men who have experienced violence and their struggles to heal and remain safe in an environment that both denied their trauma and blamed them for their injuries.
News!: Cleveland Plain Dealer includes Wrong Place, Wrong Time in their Top 20 Books of 2009.
Wrong Place, Wrong Time: Trauma and Violence in the Lives of Young Black Men
John A. Rich, M.D., M.P.H.
Medical school taught John Rich how to deal with physical trauma in a big city hospital but not with the disturbing fact that young black men were daily shot, stabbed, and beaten. This is Rich's account of his personal search to find sense in the juxtaposition of his life and theirs.
Young black men in cities are overwhelmingly the victims -- and perpetrators -- of violent crime in the United States. Troubled by this tragedy -- and by his medical colleagues' apparent numbness in the face of it -- Rich, a black man who grew up in relative safety and comfort, reached out to many of these young crime victims to learn why they lived in a seemingly endless cycle of violence and how it affected them. The stories they told him are unsettling -- and revealing about the reality of life in American cities.
Mixing his own perspective with their seldom—heard voices, Rich relates the stories of young black men whose lives were violently disrupted -- and of their struggles to heal and remain safe in an environment that both denied their trauma and blamed them for their injuries. He tells us of people such as Roy, a former drug dealer who fought to turn his life around and found himself torn between the ease of returning to the familiarity of life on the violent streets of Boston and the tenuous promise of accepting a new, less dangerous one.
Rich's poignant portrait humanizes young black men and illustrates the complexity of a situation that defies easy answers and solutions.
"John Rich joins the ranks of Rachel Carson, Michael Harrington and Ralph Nader for bringing attention to a pervasive social problem with a fresh perspective and warranted urgency." -- Publishers Weekly
"John Rich was selected for a prestigious MacArthur Fellowship in 2006, and his incisive book demonstrates why. Replete with poignant vignettes, this book unveils his findings. Not surprisingly, he exposes the deep human sensitivity of his subjects. Highly recommended for readers of urban sociology texts such as Nicholas Lemann's The Promised Land: The Great Black Migration and How It Changed America." -- Library Journal
"If we are going to reduce the violence in our devastated inner cities, we need to understand its causes. That is how Dr. Rich has done such an invaluable service: giving a voice to the young men who are routinely demonized for trafficking in violence and showing us humans reacting to desperate circumstances." -- Geoffrey Canada, President and CEO, Harlem Children's Zone
"John Rich's illuminating narrative powerfully renders America's domestic 'killing fields.' Wrong Place, Wrong Time is an urgent and deeply moving up—close portrait of urban violence and the all too common killing of young black Americans -- a highly perceptive work that provides in—depth understanding where there is often too little. It is a telling account that should be required reading by everyone." -- Elijah Anderson, Yale University, author of Code of the Street: Decency, Violence, and the Moral Life of the Inner City
"John Rich, who has devoted so much of his career to the study of violence -- especially in men of color -- challenges us to see beyond the injuries and the anger and to hear and appreciate the plight of these men and to understand that they, like us, seek a place of safety in their lives." -- David Satcher, M.D., Ph.D., 16th Surgeon General of the United States
John A. Rich, M.D., M.P.H., is the chair of and a professor in the Department of Health Management and Policy at the Drexel University School of Public Health, where he is also the director of the Center for Nonviolence and Social Justice. A 2006 MacArthur Fellow, Rich founded the Young Men's Health Clinic in Boston and is the former medical director of the Boston Public Health Commission. He was elected to the Institute of Medicine in 2009.