A Prophet Is Heard In Chicago

Diane Latiker with Bethany Mauger, Kids Off the Block: the Inspiring True Story of One Woman's Quest to Protect Chicago's Most Vulnerable Youth

Diane Latiker, ex-construction worker, ex-hairdresser, didn’t go to college to study community organizing or teen outreach. She didn’t have burnished credentials or experience working with at-risk teens. She simply felt a calling, one day, to invite some teenagers into her house from the crime-stricken streets of Roseland, Chicago. When they started telling their life stories, she listened. That’s when she felt her life beginning to change.

Latiker’s memoir of her program for Chicago’s most precarious tenagers reads like a combination of inspirational devotion and political thriller. What started as an informal gathering of kids playing tag and doing their homework, soon became something more. Her house became a gathering place for kids who never knew safety or stability at home. Soon, the kids she gathered, some from violent backgrounds, started talking like they had a future.

In a neighborhood almost synonymous with gangs, Latiker, called “Miss Diane” by her kids, provided a guaranteed peaceful space to simply be young. More than schools, intervention, or closely designed curricula, peace proved to be what her kids needed. Freed from the fear of poverty and violence, Miss Diane’s kids started doing homework, writing songs, and playing three-on-three basketball. Some even started talking about college.

This transition faced impediments. Latiker’s husband and kids resisted first. Having dozens of neighborhood kids, some known gang members, passing through their house at all hours created tension with her family. They couldn’t see what she saw, that these kids were, underneath their learned street swagger, still kids. Her marriage, and her relationship with her kids and grandkids, went through an extreme rocky patch.

Then Latiker encountered problems when she went looking for financial help for her kids’ growing needs. Philanthropists and churches offered moral support, but when they discovered she didn’t require kids to renounce gang membership to receive her mentorship, they turned squeamish. Nobody would support her unless she cut gang-bangers loose. That is, they demanded she stop helping those kids who most needed help, before they’d support her.

Miss Diane remained faithful to her vision, though. And “faithful” is definitely the word: her narrative is explicitly Christian. She believes God called her to support these children, and God’s plan guides her successes. She doesn’t offer a portable checklist of tools community organizers can use to resist gang violence; Kids Off the Block is her unique Christian vocation, and when she heeds God’s call, things go well. Thick or thin, events happen on God’s schedule.

Diane Latiker

Though Latiker describes Kids Off the Block as a “program,” it initially lacked structure. She simply offered ten kids a surrogate home, free from judgement and shame. Kids started inviting their similarly at-risk friends, though. Soon, the Latiker household became the neighborhood’s home. Her husband, an auto mechanic and amateur builder, turned the spare bedroom into a recording studio. Together, they turned a vacant lot into a basketball court.

Guided by trust in Christian providence, Latiker’s movement gained momentum. Kids found the love their parents were unable to provide, and that gangs promised but never delivered. Kids began thinking long-term, saving money, getting jobs. And outsiders took notice. First local venues, like the Chicago Tribune, began showing Latiker’s movement respect. Soon, she found herself featured, in glowing terms, on CNN and BET, venues that mean something in Roseland.

Nevertheless, Latiker reminds us, not everything ended well. This isn’t a moral parable, it’s a memoir. She admits forcing herself to accept that she couldn’t save kids who didn’t want saving. And as the mostly Black kids passing through her door started behaving like a community, she describes drawing hostile attention from the neighboring Hispanic neighborhood. She struggles to accept her losses alongside her victories.

Throughout, Latiker reminds readers of her two Christian principles: listen to God’s calling, even when it sounds odd, and don’t judge others. Non-judgement, to Latiker, doesn’t mean not telling others they’re doing wrong. She describes frequently scolding her proteges, and occasionally calling the police when kids can’t leave gang affiliations at the door. Rather, non-judgement means meeting kids where they are, even when it makes our adult sensibilities uncomfortable.

Latiker’s memoir isn’t a progress from triumph to triumph. Though she sees improvement among her kids, and eyes lighting up and seeing the future for the first time, she can’t make others’ hurts and traumas go away. In an environment defined by generational poverty and street violence, Latiker simply followed Christ’s injunction to open her door to “the least of these.” I hope, someday, to live up to her example.

The Bloody Streets of Clockwork City

Morgan L. Busse, Tainted: the Soul Chronicles, Book One

Katherine “Kat” Bloodmayne is among the first women admitted to the World City Academy of Science. Like her father, Kat trusts science to explain her steampunk world precisely. But she harbors a secret: when passions run high, she can call fire from her fingertips and kill with her mind. When a spoiled son of wealth attempts to compromise her, Kat virtually destroys him. She has to flee everything, including her father, whose motivations are less than fatherly.

Morgan Busse’s fourth book, first in a new series, is a smorgasbord of genre clichés and boilerplate changes. The literary purist in me wants to lambaste the novel’s derivative content and well-worn tone. Yet Busse so eagerly acknowledges her borrowings, and so gleefully invites us into her clockwork world, that I can't hold it against her. It’s almost like we’re in on the joke with her.

Stephen Grey, formerly World City’s youngest police inspector, quits the force when events undermine his faith in law and humanity. Now he hunts criminals as a “Fugitive Recovery Agent,” because it sounds classier than “bounty hunter.” One ordinary day, Kat Bloodmayne arrives in Stephen’s office, scared and desperate. Tragedy follows close behind her, hitting Stephen right in the heart.

Together, Kat and Stephen escape World City just ahead of bloodthirsty lawmen. Standing at the brink of their empire’s frontier, they seek the only doctor who might cure Kat’s condition, a researcher disgraced for bringing the soul into scientific discussion. Their desperation for answers makes them vulnerable, and in the genre tradition, that makes feelings run high. But before they profess to one another, Stephen discovers what Kat’s been hiding. He may never trust her again.

Reading along, it feels like Busse has smooshed two shorter novellas together to create one standard sized novel. In the first, Kat’s passion for science, and Hermione-like dedication to learning, drive her into conflict with the patriarchy. She stoically bears the cost, however, in hopes of winning her scholar father’s love… a hope doomed from the outset. Meanwhile, Stephen’s love for law is matched only by his love for a society heiress. In one brutal day, both loves are shattered, stunting his ability to trust anyone.

Morgan L. Busse

The second novella, which Busse clearly enjoys more, judging from the attention to detail she invests, begins with a moment of violence. A handsome but amoral fellow graduate forces himself on Kat; she defends herself with her only tool, her superpower. Pursued by scientists who consider her a specimen, she turns to Stephen, the only person she can trust. Together they escape the comfort of civilization for the rigors of the frontier, where they may find themselves, if they live long enough.

As noted, my literary purist inclinations initially made me tetchy when Busse signposted the comfy tropes she pinches from genre classics. But I pushed through my grad-school habits long enough to realize: Busse knows exactly what she's doing. She makes no pretense of art and literature, she's kicking her heels up and having as much fun as she can stand. And she invites us to join her in her barn dance of genre abandon.

Like most steampunk fiction, this novel foregrounds a premature collision between modernity and tradition. World City has built an empire of science and gleaming, multi-story architecture. (When they say “science,” they mainly mean “technology.” There's little pursuit of pure knowledge.) But this capital built on modernism willfully ignores that most of the empire is still poor, hanging on for dear life. Our heroes must venture into the wild to find the answers technology can’t offer.

This novel comes from a dedicated Christian publisher, and there's a definite subplot of faith. Kat, raised without religion, must understand her soul to contain her superpower’s destructive edge. Stephen rejected childhood religion when the law and his fiancé both betrayed him. Faced with threats that put them outside their society, both Kat and Stephen start to pray. But this theme never becomes overbearing or preachy. Readers can simply enjoy a good boilerplate genre thriller if they want.

If one theme runs through this book, it’s this: science is reliable, but people aren't. When humans turn science to selfish ends, we have to find our center outside ourselves. Eventually, we’ll our own frontier, asking ourselves the same questions that plague these characters. Busse mercifully refrains from preaching at us, even at her most overtly religious moments. But she does present one possible answer to questions that are more universal than we might like to admit.