If I could give this book more than 5 stars, I would. Normally a slow reader, I started and finished this book within 24 hours. It is both eye-opening and heartbreaking. Putting this book down, I have a lingering hopefulness in the humanity of individuals.
This is the true story of Michelle Kuo, a daughter of Taiwanese immigrants, who graduated from Harvard, then joined Teach for America and lived for two years in Helena, Arkansas, a town in the Mississippi Delta. A few years later, while a student at Harvard Law School, she learns that a former standout student is in jail for murder. She returns to Helena and visits him in jail. In this book, Kuo deftly presents a story at the intersection of race, education, poetry, privilege, economics, immigration, law, and the vestiges of slavery in the south, including the prison-industrial complex. Perhaps unexpectedly, this book is, in the way it weaves together so many important issues, quintessentially American.
Along the way, I did fear that the telling of the story might be a kind of white savior narrative. Even though Michelle Kuo isn't white, didn't she swoop in and save Patrick? Maybe... But in the way she portrayed their time together, it seemed like she was just figuring things out as she went. At one point, towards the end, when she realizes that Patrick had surpassed her expectations, had expressed himself in ways that didn't result from her direct guidance, she thinks of herself as a conduit. Just a conduit through which Patrick could realize his true self.
Finally, some personal thoughts on why this book affected me so much. My maiden name is Kuo, I, too, attended an elite university, and my parents were immigrants from Taiwan. Many of the author's experiences, especially her relationship with her parents, were entirely familiar in every way. I'm also a part-time teacher, albeit in predominantly white upper middle class neighborhoods. But every year I've taught, I've taught a particular course that usually meant that my roster was not a typical slice of the rest of the school; in my classes, I'd have students of color, students on special education plans, and students with less than ideal home lives - and frequently one student fit all three descriptions. I wouldn't for a second even begin to try to compare the students in this book with my students in a wealthy suburb who had teachers and guidance counselors and special education liaisons looking out for them. Still, every time a student addressed the author as "Ms. Kuo," I let myself imagine some kind of alternate universe in which I might have been in a situation similar to hers. And when I think about how two of my former students dropped out of school within a year of having taken my class, I can't help but think, "How could I have done more?"
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