Picture Dictionary & Books : Free for English Learner!

Because that risk reveals the strength of one's heart.

Let me take a step back and just ask an uncomfortable question.

Who am I to tell this story, as in this Patrick story?

Patrick's the one who lived with this pain and I have never been hungry a day in my life.

I thought about this question a lot, but what I want to say is that this story is not just about Patrick.

It's about us, it's about the inequality between us.

The world of plenty that Patrick and his parents and his grandparents have been shut out of.

In this story, I represent that world of plenty.

And in telling this story, I didn't want to hide myself.

Hide the power that I do have.

In telling this story, I wanted to expose that power and then to ask, how do we diminish the distance between us?

Reading is one way to close that distance. It gives us a quiet universe that we can share together, that we can share in equally.

You're probably wondering now what happened to Patrick.

Did reading save his life? It did and it didn't.

When Patrick got out of prison, his journey was excruciating.

Employers turned him away because of his record, his best friend, his mother, died at age 43 from heart disease and diabetes.

He's been homeless, he's been hungry.

So people say a lot of things about reading that feel exaggerated to me. Being literate didn't stop him form being discriminated against. It didn't stop his mother from dying. So what can reading do?

I have a few answers to end with today.

Reading charged his inner life with mystery, with imagination, with beauty.

Reading gave him images that gave him joy: mountain, ocean, deer, frost.

Words that taste of a free, natural world.

Reading gave him a language for what he had lost.

How precious are these lines from the poet Derek Walcott?

Patrick memorized this poem.

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