Michelle Kuo (2)

This page-turner about race, class, educational opportunity and the legacies of American slavery and Jim Crow still playing out in our public schools is exciting as a personal story and engaging as a study of American public education. Michelle Kuo's memoir, James Baldwin's Notes of a Native Son, and Eula Biss's essay on teaching in a Harlem public school (including on the morning of September 11, 2001) in her collection Notes from No Man's Land all talk about the pivotal role a teacher is expected to have, did have, and/or could have had in their students' lives. Michelle Kuo's nuanced writing about her student's awakening--which he reaches because she patiently even doggedly provided him the mentoring and the voices he needed to read, well beyond the time of her employment in Teach For America--evokes a spectrum of responses in me: anger, admiration, grief, recognition and shame. It's a plus that she is a writer honest and skilled enough to delineate her own misgivings and bouts of egotism. She doesn't display her young student's trauma for the sake of spectacle.… (més)

The author, a teacher, describes her time at a rural school and focuses on the time she spent with a particular student, Patrick. Since the author is Asian, this couldn't be described as a White Savior narrative, but it does have some of those overtones. The author also includes background information about the town and the justice system which is interesting. Overall, though, it doesn't really add anything new or fascinating to this branch of literature. I enjoyed reading it, but didn't come away with any more meaning or insight, which was what I expect from this kind of book.… (més)