Tales Out of School CL

by Porter Shreve and Sherman Alexie

Book Overview

A luminous collection of passionate original essays that speak of the powerful, flawed, wildly diverse experience of school in America. Includes pieces by Sherman Alexie, Stuart Dybek, Carolyn... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0807042161
• ISBN13: 9780807042168
• Release Date: January 2000
• Publisher: Beacon Press (MA)
• Length: 203 Pages
• Weight: 1.02 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.3" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Re-experiencing school

In her smart Introduction Dr. Susan Richards Shreve says, "I have had a half a century of an uneasy alliance with school." She tells about that alliance from a variety of angles, beginning with herself as "a bad student, a very bad student, and finally a good one." She's an English professor, a mother of four children, am impassioned advocate and an able observer and memoirist. Her son, Porter Shreve, has his great own story to tell - as the bedeviled (and bedeviling) 'scholarship kid' at the school that employed his dad. There are 16 additional pieces in this somewhat uneven collection. All of the contributors are Americans; academics and/or professional writers. More than a few grew up poor and felt ostracized - and talk about that experience. The domestic debate regarding public versus private schools continues, with varying success, in several of these pieces. (Nina Revoyr, Francesca Delbanco, others). In some of the stories, memories are likely fresh because the writer is only a decade or so away from the actual experience. The remembered pain and turmoil of adolescence combines is here. Sherman Alexie's young life was under a long shadow: poverty, alcoholism, and an awful disconnect. Alexie's account - of Indian cruelty to Indians - is powerfully bitter. (He reports having asked a bulimic female classmate to "Give me your lunch if you're just going to throw up." ) Immigrant experience, feelings of being an outsider for other reasons - and the ever-present threat of bullying and ostracism are here, too. Learning disabilities, sex, death, vandalism, parents, good and bad teachers - all present. Class conflict and political tension, too. Teachers have enormous powers - to annoy and to hurt, but also to love and redeem. Michael Patrick MacDonald's "Fight the Power" offers an astonishing picture of violence in to-be-integrated South Boston that slyly compares it to Belfast. Jeff Richards' essay "LD" talks about family, learning disabilities, persistence and love - with honesty and passion. David Haynes writes, straightforwardly and well, about teaching - in the dark, really, at first, and by default. He says blithely but not flippantly that he had neglected to choose a profession, so he began to teach.Class clown David Sedaris ("I Like Guys") does not fail to deliver - in one of the liveliest of the stories.Definitely worth reading.