teacher
I remember her as a small woman, but what do I know? I was small myself. She’s in none of the official photographs I have from my elementary-school days, but in my memory, my first librarian is a gentle white woman who wore glasses and was exceedingly kind to this new immigrant. I do not remember her voice, but I do remember that every time I saw her, she called me to her desk and showed me with an almost conspiratorial glee a book she had picked out for me, a book I always read and often loved.
Every now and then you get lucky in your education and you make a teacher-friend; Mrs. Crowell was my first. By second grade she was allowing me to take out more books than the prescribed limit. By third grade I was granted admission to her librarian’s office. My love of books was born of hers. As a newcomer with almost no knowledge of the country in which I’d found myself, I was desperate to understand where the hell I was, who I was. I sought those answers in books. It was in Mrs. Crowell’s library that I found my first harbor, my first truly safe place in the United States. I still feel a happy pulse every time I see a library. I’m with Borges in imagining Paradise as ‘a kind of library.’ Where instead of angels there will be a corps of excellent librarians.
“In Mrs. Crowell’s Library,” part of “The Educational Experiences That Change a Life,” The New York Times, September 14, 2011.
The school had some good teachers, mostly older women who didn’t care if they were laughed at for reciting poetry, or for letting a tear fall while they described the Battle of Verdun.
This Boy’s Life (New York: Grove Press, 1989), 182.
He was kind to me, but I had no sense that he took particular notice of me. There were other, smarter kids in the class, and soon I fell back into my usual position—of thinking I was just a little over average in most things. But near the end of the semester, we read Macbeth. Believe me, this is not an easy play to connect to the lives of suburban high schoolers, but somehow he made the play seem electric, dangerous, relevant. After procrastinating till the night before it was due, I wrote a paper about the play—the first paper I typed on a typewriter—and turned it in the next day.
I got a good grade on it, and below the grade Mr. Criche wrote, “Sure hope you become a writer.” That was it. Just those six words, written in his signature handwriting—a bit shaky, but with a very steady baseline. It was the first time he or anyone had indicated in any way that writing was a career option for me. We’d never had any writers in our family line, and we didn’t know any writers personally, even distantly, so writing for a living didn’t seem something available to me. But then, just like that, it was as if he’d ripped off the ceiling and shown me the sky.
Dave Eggers, “Remembering an Inspiring Teacher, Salon, August 1, 2011.
Didn’t somebody ask Leonard Cohen where he got his ideas, and he said that if he knew, he’d go there more often? What I’m trying to do is find a way to get into that place. And I can do it on my own, but it’s been really interesting being around other people, trying to show them about it, because it really is just showing somebody where the path is down to the curvy river. And people think I’m a genie at first, and then they realize, no, I just knew where the trailhead was.
“Lynda Barry in search of the image world,” The Boston Phoenix, interview by S.I. Rosenbaum, April 13, 2011.