Reading at Lee High School

I found a blog entry from Ms.Wadhwa, a wonderful teacher who invited me to give a reading and a workshop at my old high school. It's pretty cool of her and I am happy that I made a positive impact on her class. Here's an excerpt.

Yesterday Houston poet Radames Ortiz performed for the students, and one kid who claimed he hated poetry came up to me today with a poem in his hand and asked to perform it in front of the class. Has hell frozen over? I was happily surprised.

Radames did a nice meditation activity in which we closed our eyes and had to focus on the sensory experience of one childhood memory. Two came to mind; one was me crouched under the windows of my garage in Alief, peeking out at two boys who were talking in my driveway about nothing. The other was me scrambling to get my books together in sixth grade in Ohio after school so that I could sprint to the bus before some racist prick sat across from me and flicked my book while I pretended to read. In the past, this memory has brought me much sadness, but yesterday, I was able to experience in an objective manner; not as though the person in the memory wasn't me, but as though I was me now, in her body, impermeable, and it made me feel strong.