Saturday, November 23rd, 2013. It was just another day in America; an unremarkable Saturday on which ten children & teens were killed by gunfire. The youngest was nine; the oldest was nineteen. White, Black & Latino, they fell in suburbs, hamlets & ghettos. None made the national news. There was no outrage about their passing. It was just another day in the death of America, where on a daily average
- seven children & teens are killed by guns. Younge picked this day at random, searched for their families & tells their stories. The nine-year-old opened the door & was shot in the head by his mother`s ex-boyfriend. The eleven-year-old was killed by his friend at a sleep over in rural Michigan. The eighteen-year-old gang member, on Chicago`s South Side, was shot in a stairwell just days after being released from prison. Through ten moving chapters
- one for each child
- Younge explores the way these children lived & lost their short lives. He finds out who they were, who they wanted to be, the environments they inhabited, & what this might tell us about society at large. What emerges is a searing portrait of childhood & youth in contemporary America.