Summary Of Ain 'T No Makin' It By Jay Macleod

Ain’t No Makin’ It, is a three part book written by Jay MacLeod that looks into the lives of two groups of boys growing up in Clarendon Heights. The two groups that MacLeod interviewed were the Hallway Hangers and the Brothers. He started his work by getting close to the boys and making sure they would be comfortable with him asking questions. After interviewing the boys and writing about their lives in his first edition of the book he made another edition. Eight years later he returned to the projects to find the men not doing so well. He discovered that schooling did not affect the boy's outcomes. Fifteen years later he returned to the Heights again to make another edition to his book. In his third edition of the book MacLeod explained where

Alike the Hallway Hangers they also were not achieving what they had hoped for. Many of the boys dropped out of college with the realization that it was too expensive or too much to work a job and go to school. Learning that they needed money many of the men looked for jobs, but some went to the streets to sell drugs. This caused some of the Brothers to go to jail. Brothers who never turned to the streets got low paying job that did not meet their needs. Then fifteen years later when MacLeod came back to interview the Brothers for the third time, he found many of the men to be achieving the same life as the Hallway Hangers. Some men were in and out of jail. Some of the Brothers were still in the Heights while others moved away. Most of the men had children and full time jobs and were making a good

Jay Macleod interviews boys for his research. This way he can use actual stories about people to see how growing up in poverty can affect someone's life. He was also able to make ethnographic observations which makes the story feel more real. I think using qualitative research for a study like this can be useful. The direction that MacLeod took on writing his book was biased. I think he should have interviewed boys and girls for his research. He did state that using girls for his research definitely could have changed the results, but he did not feel like he would have gotten true results from girls because he did not feel like he could get them to open up to him like the boys. Another biased approach that MacLeod took was interviewing boys who grew up without fathers. If he would have interviewed some boys who grew up with fathers that could have also skewed his research. Also by using quantitative research, he didn’t get results from other areas of the world. Using qualitative research, Macleod would have been able to compare his findings with what has been recorded in other areas of the world. Personally if I would have been the author of this book I would have used a mixture of quantitative and qualitative research. I would have interviewed both boys and girls from the Heights to get some personal information and also stuck some statistics in my paper to prevent