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Volume 6, Number 1 - Fall 2007
Two Young Men Learn to Read Stories and People
As a young boy, Lee McFarland read “Calvin & Hobbes” comic strips. Born in Texas, he went to six different high schools; his family moved constantly because of his mother’s military service. After a while, he wasn’t sure what grade he should be in. Eventually, he stopped going to school.
Now he is 21 and feels differently. “You’ve got to have education to prove yourself,” he says. “It messed me up by switching schools. I want to be a lawyer or a family psychiatrist. I want to express the words to people to help them out. I want to learn the ability to read people.”
In People & Stories/Gente y Cuentos, he read literature for the first time in a long while. Some of the stories stayed with him, like “Thank You, M’am,” by Langston Hughes, the story of a boy who attempts to snatch an older woman’s purse. Instead of turning him over to the police, the woman takes the boy home and teaches him a life-changing lesson about generosity, need and forgiveness.
“’Thank You, M’am’ showed me that people are always going to have problems, and to try not to be quick to judge. People have limits of what they can and cannot do.”
Lee says he felt anxious when facilitator Alison Stevenson first asked him to write. “I’m a horrible speller. Now I know you can just ask for help. I was nervous at first. But it was fun. People & Stories showed me writing isn’t all that bad.”
After the graduation ceremony, after reading his story and receiving a copy of Langston Hughes’s short stories as a gift, McFarland paged through the table of contents and smiled. “I’m actually going to take time and read this Langston Hughes book. There are some good titles in there. It’ll be the first time in a long time actually taking time to read a book.”
He looks up. “I’m 21. I realize that I want to get this done. This is the biggest step in my life right now.”
For classmate Leroy Kearse, a 16-year-old from Trenton, People & Stories posed a challenge to two skills he did not think of as “my strong sides”—reading and writing. After the classes, he says shyly, “I like it a little bit better. When I read, I’ll pay attention more now.”
“Thank You, M’am” also made an impression on him, as did “Homework,” Peter Cameron’s story about a boy who loses his only friend when his dog is killed in a supermarket parking lot. Leroy wrote about the death of his own dog, Star, when he was 11 years old. “I just wanted Star back,” he wrote. “Because there was no dog like Star. It took me about three months to get over it…And from that day on, I name all my girl dogs Star.”
Leroy said he felt proud of his stories that were included in the Youth Corps anthology. After participating in a long string of educational and vocational programs, Leroy is finally serious about getting his GED.
“My GED matters because without that, I can’t make it too far in life. Pretty soon, you’ll need that just to sweep the floor at McDonald’s. I’d like to do real estate or something to do with houses. If not that, then run my own business.” He plans to take the GED this fall.