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I hear you Cynique Are your folks telling you that things are getting better? Is there cause of immediate optimism? What are they saying? The situation will indeed play itself out, but not in the sense I think you mean. You see I don't believe that the conditions that currently exist were created on their own, by pure chance. Great neighborhoods are not created by luck or happenstance, its take work and planning. The same is true for bad neighborhoods. I tend to believe Chicago's south side is being set up to be "rebooted" the way Harlem, the U Street Corridor in NW DC, and other, formerly, chocolate communities have been. Things will get so bad in Chicago people will beg to have folks locked up. Actually, I thought the reboot of Chicago's south side was started when they famously demolished those Taylor projects. Where did those people go? Some folks in Harlem projects are paranoid they will loose their homes for fear the City will turn the projects over to private management companies who will impose "market rate" rents. Sadly their are no affordable housing alternatives for people in New York City. There are many families who have occupied (been trapped really), in the projects for 3 and 4 generations! The South Side of Chicago will definitely get better, but I doubt many of the current residents will be the beneficiaries of that improvement...

@Troy OK. I accused you of the things you had not previously clarified in your blanket statements. As a resident of a Chicago suburb, I get my information from people who do live there, so maybe the people you get your information from know more about the situation than the people I get mine from. As for guns, their purpose is to kill or maim; they can even do this by accident, not in someone's hand. Without a gun, a person cannot shoot and kill someone, so a killer is as much under the control of a gun as a gun is under his control. But this is an issue that will never be resolved. To say that those in authority have the power to end the killings in Chicago is rhetoric. Especially since you weren't specific about what solutions a computerized, class-conscious world offers in the way of reform. Or can you complain about the high rate of black incarceration and at the same time lament about what felons are doing to their own people. You can't villainize the police and then expect them to keep crime under control. Black apologists have no plan to turn things around. They just shift the blame and make racism the scapegoat. IMO, the situation will just have to play itself out because it involves changing the mindset of young black men. They will have to figure out for themselves if they are creating a better world for the offspring they are wantonly impregnating their aimless babymamas with, or whether replicating themselves will just perpetuate the problems they faced. Everybody on every front needs to make better decisions.

@Trina Jordan, I agree with VL. While I've never written a novel myself I do consider myself an authority on books in the digital space I've been an active user of Amazon since it was invented. There are three main issues here (and I write this for your sake as well as other authors who may also be reading this). It is looks like there were some issues loading your book(s) information in Amazon. Surely the images of the cute little girl alone is not the book cover. How many books do you actually have is it three? You should share the information about your book's description here. There are a lot of reasons for this, but paramount among them is that few people will actually follow the links--save folks a step and describe the book, they can always go your site for more information Speaking of sites, get your own website. Amazon should not be your primary web presence, and if you are going to send people to Amazon--please use an affiliate code. Read this article point #3 to learn how and why: http://aalbc.com/blog/index.php/2013/07/28/5-things-writers-must-do/