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We went all the time. In my memory my day would take us every Saturday morning. I can picture the librarian's face and hear her voice perfectly. I loved the summer reading programs - moving my piece up the ladder to the top f the castle each time I finished a new book. I also remember meeting my best friend at the library when I was five. It was a sacred place for me spatially, ritually and of course because of the many books I discovered there.

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I grew up in a monolingual English speaking home. I am not sure what drove me to join the "French Club" in 2nd grade but I loved it. Janine, Elizabeth and I went once a week during lunch and learned lots of entry level French. I sang "It's a Small World" in French for the talent show, went on to take AP French in high school and then intensively study it and Spanish in college. I have always been drawn to languages and learning about the beauty behind different structures, sounds and meanings.

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Whenever I am asked to close my eyes I go right back to the theater classroom I was raised in. Below was my theater teacher Joyce Piven. I spent 5th-12th grade in that safe space, learning about improvisation, group "machine" work and how to adapt the written word to the stage. I loved expressing myself in this way and imagining how a short story can be told purely through body movements, language and imagination.

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I got my first diary in third grade.  It had a kitty on the front and came with a lock.  I wrote in it faithfully - about my feelings, my crushes, my experiences.  I will never forget the day my brother read my diary and discovered I had a crush on Dave Gordy!

I still journal on the regular. At least once a week. It is a sacred ritual in my life, an opportunity to put pen to paper as I tap in internally.

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Our family had one of those electric typerwriters. I used to put it on the dining room table, put a cap on, and start typing short stories like my life depended on it.

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I eventually lived in France, Mexico and Spain as a young adult.  They were all life changing experiences.  Being woken up on my birthday to "Las Mananitas" when living with the Bautistas, taking theater improv in Spain en espanol, reading Harry Potter in Spanish, writing letters back and forth to the Crozettes for years...All of these experiences pushed me to consider forms of expression and text outside of my native tongue and to connect to a larger global community.

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Ms Korshak edited Denagelo's note to me "Will you go with me yes ro no" at Camp Timeberlee.  She put a big red circle around "ro" and had him re write it

Mr. Cole read out loud to us every day.  "Wrinkle In Time."  "Swiftly Tilting Planet."  He discouraged us from using the word "nice" as a descriptor.  I listened.

Ms. Stamos introduced me to Romeo and Juliet.  I wrote in a journal for her class.  She wrote me back.  If only I had been more honest and transparent with her as my 9th grade teacher, she could have helped me navigate a very dark chapter in my life.  Rest in peace Ms Stamos. She passed away July 1, 2021. Just learned that.

Mr Crotty was all of it: he introduced me to Zora Neal Hurtson, he pushed me in my writing, he made the ending of my formative years in Evanston super special.  Wrote a whole piece about us all growing up and having to leave 100 Acres Woods (a la Christopher robin leaving Pooh....).  I still have my binder from that class.

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I performed in dozens of plays in my life.  Studying scripts, memorizing lines, practicing in front of live audiences.  I never tired of it, and see those experiences as fundamental to my relationship to the spoken word.

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Bob Marley's Greatest Hits
Beatles Abby Road
Crosby, Stills and Nash
Carol King
Madonna
Whitney Houston
James Taylor
Mariah Carey
De La Soul
Tribe Called Quest
En Vogue

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Discovering Ani Difranco's lyrics in college was a game changer for me. It was the first time I connected with a lyricist on a deep, personal level. I ate up her words like water from a fountain. Couldn't get enough. Listened incessantly and counted down the days until her next album came out. Her words spoke directly to me. I felt seen, understood and in community with other young feminists.

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I read all of them. While I also remember reading Beverly Cleary books, I think Blume's portrayal of growing up, expressing feelings, etc. really stuck with me. In my memory these were the first books I really connected to the main characters around.

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Books played a very different role for me once I got to college. Paulo Freire, Myles Horton, bell hooks (and Peggy MacIntosh Invisible Backpack)....they spoke to a part of my soul I didn't know there were words for and paved the road for my journey as an educator focused on liberatory practices.

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My father kept journals throughout my childhood. They were public, and he invited us all to "log" in them as well. They were in cursive, on a yellow legal pad, and he always began with the date and which way the wind was blowing that day.

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My college program required a proficiency exam. I went through the program in both French and Spanish I loved it so much. Monday-Friday you took a lecture in the morning (en espanol), then had to eat lunch with your professors solo en espanol, then an hour of conversation in the afternoon. With both French and Spanish I chose to explain how to play Set! in French and then in Spanish.

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I grew up in a white, Eurocentric home...

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I grew up in a white, Eurocentric home...

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where the television and movie characters looked and sounded like me, where I could easily access books at the library whose stories matched my own.  The bookshelves in our home were filled with books and my father emphasized reading and writing in a myriad of ways.  Teachers at my school (mostly) looked and sounded like me and the curriculum welcomed me into a literate identity with ease.  Literacy was about reading books. Nothing more, nothing less.

Though I hated "Sarah, Plain and Tall" for its name, the books in our school might as well been called "Sarah, White, Plain and Tall."

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at school I was not conscious of it.

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I inherited the newspaper advisor role at San Lorenzo High and for five years taught journalism. It was the most authentic teaching of writing I did and I LOVED the writing process with students. Authentic audience, student choice, relevancy and ownership. We went through many "Shitty First Drafts" like Annie Lamont wrote about - I do believe we embraced writing as a true process.

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was the first book I read where I connected a part of my identity with the main character deeply. She was Jewish. I was Jewish. She was a teenager. I was a teenager. I read that book every year around the high holidays (we didn't go to temple, I was trying to figure out what ritual meant) to connect to this part of my heritage I didn't understand. Further; I think reading that book and learning the history ignited a social justice spark in me. At that time in my life, however, it was private between me and Anne.

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I am culturally Jewish as defined by the Altschul tribe. We never went to temple.  I never learned Hebrew nor did I have a bat mitzvah.  Louisa and Naomi, my best friends, studied Hebrew intensively at age 11 and 12 while I continued with French classes, existing outside of the temple community.  When I see Hebrew today it triggers an outsider feeling in me and leaves in feeling inadequate, like I am a fake or less capable.

I feel the same way when Jewish people around me reference songs or traditions that I do not understand. In those moments my face gets hot and again a feeling of inadequacy surfaces.