What worries me most about Miles’ comment is the fact that those 29 struggling schools...
, James Baldwin spoke about how books helped him break out of his culturally imposed destiny and imagine a new one. “By the time I was 13, I had read myself out of Harlem,” he said. “What I had to do then was bring the two things together: the possibilities the books suggested and the impossibilities of the life around me.”
The kids in HISD deserve that chance. That opportunity to rewrite their future by falling in love with reading. As a new student who moved in the middle of junior year to a small Mexico City high school where the students had known each other their whole lives, I spent the first few months feeling out of place. The library was my lunchtime refuge while I was barely beginning to make friends. Mr. Harry Brake, our zany, passionate librarian, encouraged me to join the literary magazine he oversaw. In that group, I found, for the first time, a community as excited about poetry and words as I was.
Regina Lankenau is assistant op-ed editor and a member of the Houston Chronicle editorial board. This piece originally appeared in Thursday’s SaysHou newsletter, a subscriber exclusive dedicated to your letters to the editor. To join the conversation, sign up at:
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