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4.05 AVERAGE
4.05 AVERAGE
Poignant memoir of the author’s year teaching a writing class at juvenile hall in California.
Because of this book I read everything he's written to date. Funny, alarming and touching, it chronicles the author's time spent volunteering in a juvenile boys' detention center in Los Angeles as an English teacher.
Because of this book I read everything he's written to date. Funny, alarming and touching, it chronicles the author's time spent volunteering in a juvenile boys' detention center in Los Angeles as an English teacher.
My first impression, on reading the first snippet of an essay in this book, was: these boys can really *write*! These "boys", of course, are not just any boys - violent juvenile delinquents, locked up for crimes like armed robbery, drug dealing, routinely murder. And yet we see a whole different side of them here, through their interactions with their writing teacher and through their writing, which is raw, honest and powerful. You get to see why they've done what they've done - though after a while you begin to forget that they are, after all, at best delinquents and at worst murderers, whereupon Salzman reminds us - and himself - of the fact by attending the trial of one of his students. The trial itself is not entirely just: if rehabilitation is the point of the justice system, it certainly does not happen in this case, nor in almost all of the cases of Salzman's students.
I came away a little fearful of the time when - as one of Salzman's students quite insightfully observes - the once-juveniles locked up for unjustly long sentences are set free, having been brutalised by the system for so long, bearing grudges against society for basically locking them up and throwing away the key instead of seeing them for the troubled, misguided youths that they were and helping them. But even stronger is the lingering sentiment of regret at the sheer level of talent being so callously wasted.
I came away a little fearful of the time when - as one of Salzman's students quite insightfully observes - the once-juveniles locked up for unjustly long sentences are set free, having been brutalised by the system for so long, bearing grudges against society for basically locking them up and throwing away the key instead of seeing them for the troubled, misguided youths that they were and helping them. But even stronger is the lingering sentiment of regret at the sheer level of talent being so callously wasted.
challenging
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
I had to read this for my class, the individual and society, and I really enjoyed it! I felt like this book made me see past the label of criminal. These prisoners are just boys who are put in shitty situations just by virtue of where they were born.
hopeful
reflective
slow-paced
Thank you Mark for giving your time to these boys and letting the rest of us know they are there and that they are human beings worth some time.
Not what I expected, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. After spending several months reading nothing but theology books, this felt like a breeze.