The Courage We Lack

For more than a quarter century, Milagros de Jesús de Féliz has walked the streets of Santiago de los Caballeros as a volunteer advocate for the working children of the Dominican Republic - children whose courage, resilience, and dignity rarely make it into the headlines.

The Courage We Lack gathers their testimonies. Drawn from twenty-six years of frontline service and five years of return conversations with young adults the author first met as children, this is sociographic nonfiction at its most unflinching: real names changed where needed, real lives faithfully told. Each story is grouped by theme and introduced by a short summary to guide the reader through a world that lives in plain sight - at traffic-light corners, in central streets, in neighborhoods the comfortable classes pass by without seeing.

With a foreword by Dr. Bruno Rosario Candelier, Director of the Dominican Academy of Language, and translated by a team led by Dr. Walter J. Maldonado of Florida International University, this English edition brings to a wider audience a work the original Spanish reviewers called a "radiografía social" - a social X-ray - of a city, a population, and a generation.

Essential reading for social workers, educators, human rights advocates, students of Latin America, and any reader who believes the dignity of childhood is not negotiable.

Also available in Spanish: El coraje que nos falta: Voces de la niñez que resiste (ISBN: 978-969-9092-87-9). Search the title on Amazon to find the original Spanish edition.