Reading with Patrick
Michelle Kuo · first published 2017 · ISBN 9780812987140
Kuo taught English in rural Arkansas as a Teach for America volunteer, then left for law school. Years later, learning that a former student named Patrick had been jailed for murder, she returned to Helena and tutored him through classic literature from a jail cell. The book interweaves her awakening as a young teacher, her years away, and her profound reconnection with Patrick through reading Frederick Douglass, James Baldwin, and Walt Whitman. It's a meditation on abandonment, redemption, and the power of literature to dignify a person the world has written off.
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This book confronts a hard truth: leaving the classroom and forgetting your students is possible. It also models how a teacher can repair that rupture through sustained presence and faith in a student's potential. It will move you.