{"id":42495,"date":"2017-07-10T11:12:50","date_gmt":"2017-07-10T15:12:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/?p=42495"},"modified":"2017-07-10T11:27:45","modified_gmt":"2017-07-10T15:27:45","slug":"reading-patrick-teacher-student-life-changing-friendship-michelle-kuo-christian-science-monitor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/reading-patrick-teacher-student-life-changing-friendship-michelle-kuo-christian-science-monitor\/","title":{"rendered":"Reading with Patrick: A Teacher, a Student, and a Life-Changing Friendship by Michelle Kuo [in Christian Science Monitor]"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"‘Reading with Patrick’ tells of a teacher’s extraordinary journey<\/strong><\/p>\n

Pontificating with superlatives only halfway through the calendar year might prove short-sighted, but risking humiliated inaccuracy seems to be a negligible consequence for claiming that Reading with Patrick<\/em> could be the most affecting book you\u2019ll read this year. To experience such a spectrum of responses \u2013 from anger to admiration, disbelief to inspiration, helpless frustration to stand-up-and-shout-cheering \u2013 should be enough impetus to get you urgently “reading with Patrick” as soon as possible.<\/p>\n

Debut author Michelle Kuo<\/a> doesn\u2019t offer a perfect book \u2013 she\u2019s guilty of unnecessary repetition, overdone details, and unresolved tangential narrative spurs, but what she\u2019s written is unguardedly open, thoroughly revealing, and deeply thoughtful. On the surface, Kuo\u2019s story reads like a heroic tale: a Harvard-educated idealist takes a two-year teaching job in one of the country\u2019s most depressed, segregated cities and makes lasting connections with many of her middle-schoolers. Indeed, Kuo\u2019s altruistic actions are inarguably laudable, but Kuo is self-aware enough to recognize her youthful arrogance, admit to mistakes, question her motives, and realize the impossibility of definitively knowing the right or wrong of her decisions.<\/p>\n

The U.S.-born daughter of Taiwanese immigrants who grew up in Michigan in the 1980s, Kuo considered herself \u201cweak, sweet, obedient\u201d until she found her \u201crole models in books.\u201d With Asian Americans either missing or silenced by a history that seemed predominantly black and white, Kuo turned to writers like W.E.B. Du Bois, James Baldwin, Maya Angelou who \u201cseemed as fearless to [her] as Asian Americans seemed afraid, as essential to American history as [Asian Americans] were irrelevant.\u201d Meeting activists at Harvard emboldened her, but she realized she \u201cwasn\u2019t good at it.\u201d What she wanted was \u201cstraightforward, immediate work in places that needed people,\u201d which led her to the Mississippi Delta with Teach For America<\/a>: \u201cI went … with a specific project: to teach American history through black literature.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2004, Kuo arrived in Helena, Arkansas, assigned to an alternative school \u201cincongruously named \u2018Stars,\u2019 which the local administration used as a dumping ground for the so-called bad kids\u201d \u2013 where \u201ctroublemakers\u201d who had already been expelled from mainstream schools were given a final chance before being permanently ejected from the public education system. Here, students were \u201cpaddled\u201d: corporal punishment was still legal in Arkansas. In a predominantly African American community in which \u201c[m]ost students had never encountered an Asian person before,\u201d Kuo was insulted, cursed, and targeted, but she persisted. Relevant books \u2013 by Walter Dean Myers, Nikki Grimes, and Jacqueline Woodson \u2013 became her most effective teaching tools.<\/p>\n

As her two-year contract approached its end, Kuo agonized over whether to stay or go to Harvard Law School. Despite misgivings, she chose the law, trying to convince herself she could be more effective with her prestigious degree and powerful connections-in-the-making. Then in her final year, she got a call that one of her most promising students was in prison for murder.<\/p>\n

Patrick was 15 in her eighth-grade class when Kuo met him; she would eventually learn \u201c[h]e\u2019d watched dope deals at age five, accidentally set himself on fire at eleven.\u201d With everything he\u2019d endured, the Patrick Kuo knew was \u201cmild-mannered\u201d; he \u201cwanted to try … was thirsty for encouragement.\u201d When he skipped school too often, Kuo brought him back with additional, individual attention. Kuo would never have believed Patrick capable of such violence.<\/p>\n

Kuo returned to Helena to understand what happened. She deferred her post-graduation job at a non-profit serving undocumented immigrants in Oakland. With the “Stars” program shut down, Kuo reluctantly agreed to teach Spanish at another Helena school (her protestations that she only had two years of college language classes doesn\u2019t disqualify her). When she\u2019s not in the classroom, Kuo re-establishes her teacher\/student relationship with Patrick \u2013 in jail. Again, books provide the means to explore difficult topics, engage in intimate discussions, and share deep life lessons. Kuo leads Patrick through Narnia, black history, poetry as diverse as Bash\u014d and Whitman and Merwin; Patrick shows Kuo new paths and possibilities along the way. Easy answers, happy endings are hardly what await, but the journey together is agonizing and rewarding both.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018We shouldn\u2019t have sent you to Harvard,\u2019\u201d Kuo\u2019s parents lamented during their single visit to Helena. \u201cEverybody there thinks they can change the world.\u2019\u201d Parental disapproval aside, Kuo stays true to her course \u2013 in matters of race, equity, and justice, she becomes both witness and prosecution to prove that \u201c[a] person must matter to another, it must mean something for two people to have passed time together, to have put work into each other and into becoming more fully themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

Review<\/strong>: “‘Reading with Patrick’ tells of a teacher’s extraordinary journey,” Christian Science Monitor<\/em>, July 10, 2017<\/a><\/p>\n

Readers<\/strong>: Adult<\/p>\n

Published<\/strong>: 2017<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

‘Reading with Patrick’ tells of a teacher’s extraordinary journey Pontificating with superlatives only halfway through the calendar year might prove short-sighted, but risking humiliated inaccuracy seems to be a negligible consequence for claiming that Reading with Patrick could be the most affecting book you\u2019ll read…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":42493,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,142,21,107,20,6535,31],"tags":[6608,148,22,10,11,68,24,51,7432,39,28,29,7431],"class_list":["post-42495","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-adult-readers","category-black-african-american","category-chinese-american","category-memoir","category-nonfiction","category-repost","category-young-adult-readers","tag-bookdragon","tag-christian-science-monitor","tag-civil-rights","tag-family","tag-friendship","tag-haves-vs-have-nots","tag-historical","tag-identity","tag-michelle-kuo","tag-parent-child-relationship","tag-politics","tag-race-racism","tag-reading-with-patrick"],"yoast_head":"\nReading with Patrick: A Teacher, a Student, and a Life-Changing Friendship by Michelle Kuo [in Christian Science Monitor] - 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