Michelle Kuo - Reading with Patrick

Penetrating, hauntingIn all of the literature addressing education, race, poverty, and criminal justice, there has been nothing quite like Reading with Patrick.

J AMES F ORMAN, J R. , and A RTHUR E VENCHIK , The Atlantic

Anyone interested in questions of pedagogy, racism, and incarceration in America, not to mention literary criticism, will be enthralled by this book.It is hard not to read this challenging bookand not think, You must change your life.

J AMES W OOD, The New Yorker

Reading with Patrick could be the most affecting book youll read this year. To experience such a spectrum of responsesfrom anger to admiration, disbelief to inspiration, helpless frustration to stand-up-and-shout-cheeringshould be enough impetus to get you urgently reading with Patrick as soon as possible.

Christian Science Monitor

[A] tender memoir.

O: The Oprah Magazine

Readers witness the transformative power ofmoving lessons in both literature and life, lessons that endure and deepen in jail.

The New York Times

Reading with Patrick, Michelle Kuos rich memoir of her literary friendship with a student in a small town in the Mississippi Delta, suggests that it is perhaps more than anything a books ability to make its readers feel valuable that keeps us reading.The act of reading gave her students the chance to think of themselves as able; it gave space, attention and value to their interior lives.Instead of the tidy moral, Kuo offers a much more complex and more troubling story.

The Times Literary Supplement

In many ways[Kuos] lifelong job is to be a teacher: not just of Patrick and her students in Helena, but of us, as readers, because Kuo understands that teaching is a daily act of self-transformation, negotiation and witnessing.

America magazine

Reading with Patrick is as much about growing up Asian in America as it is about growing up black and impoverished.[Kuos] story is exceptional.

The Providence Journal

A moving and important work at a time when America remains gripped with inner turmoil.

The Herald (Scotland)

Her riveting narrative has been embraced globally for its compassionate message, its exploration of education and its insightful glimpse into societal inequality.

Hyphen Magazine

A powerful meditation on how one person can affect the life of anotherOne of the great strengths of Reading is its portrayal of the risk inherent to teaching.

Seattle Times

Honest, thoughtful, and humane, Kuos book is not only a testament to a remarkable friendship, but a must-read for anyone interested in social justice and race in America. Thoughtfully provocative reading.

Kirkus Reviews

This memoir of teaching literature in one of the poorest counties in America is a reminder of how literacy changes lives. Highly recommended.

Library Journal (starred review)

Tender and gritty, with reflections on race and justice and pedagogy, Reading with Patrick is a paean to literature, to caring and to Forsters maxim, Only connect.

Shelf Awareness

Michelle Kuos Reading with Patrick is a strikingly candid and insightful meditation on the relationship between a young teacher and a former student as they read together while the student awaits trial for murder in a Southern jail. Compulsively readable, the book manages to do two extraordinary things at once: it offers a poignant and moving account of a specific relationship, and it grapples searchingly with universal themes around families, race, poverty, teaching, and the power of literature. The book will continue to resonate long after you have put it down and returned to the everydaythis is what the best books, the best teachers, do.

C AROL S . S TEIKER , Henry J. Friendly Professor of Law and faculty co-director of the criminal justice policy program, Harvard Law School

Warmhearted but never sentimental, and acutely self-aware, Michelle Kuos memoir is the most profound, tender, and intensely moving portrait of a student-teacher relationship Ive ever read. It shows how deeply a student and teacher can change each others lives. Kuo knows the complications and the limits of helping, but she is brave and generous and stubborn enough to do it anyway.

L ARISSA M AC F ARQUHAR , author of Strangers Drowning

I delighted in this book and read it in a single weekend. Reading with Patrick is a significant work that could swell the ranks of highly motivated and qualified teacherspeople who understand they are not just transferring information but transforming lives.

B ILL M OYERS

Reading with Patrick could not be more timely. Kuo underscores the power of tender attention and shows us that if we go to the margins, we all find rescue.

F ATHER G REGORY J . B OYLE , founder, Homeboy Industries, and author of Tattoos on the Heart

Every American should read Michelle Kuos remarkable memoir. Honest, generous, humble, and wise, Reading with Patrick will endure as a defining story for our times, and, abidingly, a testament to the power of language and of books.

C LAIRE M ESSUD , author of The Woman Upstairs

In Reading with Patrick, Michelle Kuo takes on the subjects of race, privilege, and the debt that the human community owes to its most disadvantaged members with a bracing intelligence, honesty, and self-scrutiny. This is a gorgeous, urgent, and heartbreaking memoir.

D ARCY F REY , senior lecturer on English, Harvard University, and author of The Last Shot

This book is special and could not be more right on time. Its an absorbing, tender, and surprisingly honest examination of race and privilege in America that helps articulate what is often lost, seemingly intentionally, in national debates over criminal justice and education: the inner life and imagination of a young person.

W ES M OORE , author of The Other Wes Moore

RivetingReading with Patrick is an essential addition to our national conversation about institutional racism. It is also an empathic story of connection: between a dedicated teacher and her student; between history and our current times; and between literature and life. It is hard to imagine a more inspiring testament to the transformative power of reading.

E LLIOTT H OLT , author of You Are One of Them