March 23, 2023

I’ve been proud of, possibly even smug about, my efforts to diversify my reading, to look for texts from around the world to share—The Fat Years; The Power; A Lesson Before Dying; Kiffe, Kiffe Tomorrow; The Unbearable Lightness of Being; July’s People; Master Harold…and the Boys; A Madman’s Diary; Americanah—and I took care in the book lists I curated for my classes. I still had us slog through The Odyssey and pushed some old chestnuts during novel units (everyone picks two: The Sun Also Rises, A River Runs Through It, Their Eyes Were Watching God, The Great Gatsby.)  I come from schools where families aren’t responsible for purchasing texts, and I told myself financial concerns played a part in my choices. With a limited budget, I wanted to purchase books I’d be happy to revisit again and again.

With all that as context, I read a poem (Danez Smith’s 2014 “not an elegy for Mike Brown”) Friday night which punched me in my fairly smug gut. I read it out loud to my husband Saturday morning and realized that it’s not the beauty of the piece which struck me. As a writing teacher, I might even…