Rating: 3.5 stars (out of 5)
Genre: memoir
Review: Michelle Kuo joined Teach for America after graduating college, and was sent to a last-chance school for "problem" students in the Arkansas Delta. She is able to feel that she is doing something positive for her students, sometimes through merely showing that she cares about their academic success. After she leaves Teach for America to go to law school, she learns that one student, for whom she had very high hopes, has been arrested for murder. She returns to the Delta to find that Patrick has lost almost all of the reading and writing skills he had learned in her class. Feeling that her calling is to help him while he's in jail, she puts her life on hold and returns to the Delta to help him. They embark on a course of reading and writing together while they await his trial.
Kuo pulls no punches in talking about the conditions of Patrick's incarceration and the attitude of the justice system. Mostly she reports on the institutionalized racism that trap her students in a never-ending cycle of poverty, crime, drugs, and hopelessness. At the same time that Kuo tries to help Patrick, she must deal with the expectations of her own family, and make hard decisions about her own future. Through it all she is able to take a clear-eyed look at her own situation and those of her students.
FTC Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher in exchange for this review.
