Self-Identity through Literature

Abstract

or poor in college courses for EnglishEducation majors in a predominantly white college, I became a student-teacher at a Boys Detention Home near the campus. The first week a very frustrated white supervisor raised her voice loud enough for students to hear as she warned me that any attempt to teach low-income black and Puerto Rican youth was pointless: Why bother? These (students) are scum! Her attitude came as no surprise. I had undergone many ego-damaging experiences in school. My mind flashed back to countless tryouts for school plays at which I was never cast as a heroine; to a fifth grade teacher who prophesied that I would never be anything; to a short, ruddy biology teacher who tacked a grotesque photograph of a black man on the bulletin board and explained to the class that Negroes descended from apes. My mind flashed back to a world of school experiences from grade school to college through which I had been routinely insulted, humiliated, or simply ignored. The supervisor's harsh words served as an incentive for me; I began to see myself in the faces of those students and I de-