Reading with Patrick
A Teacher, a Student, and a Life-Changing Friendship
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Narrated by:
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Michelle Kuo
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By:
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Michelle Kuo
About this listen
Finalist for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize
“In all of the literature addressing education, race, poverty, and criminal justice, there has been nothing quite like Reading with Patrick.” (The Atlantic)
A memoir of the life-changing friendship between an idealistic young teacher and her gifted student, jailed for murder in the Mississippi Delta
Recently graduated from Harvard University, Michelle Kuo arrived in the rural town of Helena, Arkansas, as a Teach for America volunteer, bursting with optimism and drive. But she soon encountered the jarring realities of life in one of the poorest counties in America, still disabled by the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow. In this stirring memoir, Kuo, the child of Taiwanese immigrants, shares the story of her complicated but rewarding mentorship of one student, Patrick Browning, and his remarkable literary and personal awakening.
Convinced she can make a difference in the lives of her teenage students, Michelle Kuo puts her heart into her work, using quiet reading time and guided writing to foster a sense of self in students left behind by a broken school system. Though Michelle loses some students to truancy and even gun violence, she is inspired by some, such as Patrick. Fifteen and in the eighth grade, Patrick begins to thrive under Michelle's exacting attention. However, after two years of teaching, Michelle feels pressure from her parents and the draw of opportunities outside the Delta and leaves Arkansas to attend law school.
Then, on the eve of her law-school graduation, Michelle learns that Patrick has been jailed for murder. Feeling that she left the Delta prematurely and determined to fix her mistake, Michelle returns to Helena and resumes Patrick's education - even as he sits in a jail cell awaiting trial. Every day for the next seven months, they pore over classic novels, poems, and works of history. Little by little Patrick grows into a confident, expressive writer and a dedicated reader galvanized by the works of Frederick Douglass, James Baldwin, Walt Whitman, W. S. Merwin, and others. In her time reading with Patrick, Michelle is herself transformed, contending with the legacy of racism and the questions of what constitutes a "good" life and what the privileged owe to those with bleaker prospects.
Reading with Patrick is an inspirational story of friendship, a coming-of-age story of both a young teacher and a student, a deeply resonant meditation on education, race, and justice in the rural South, and a love letter to literature and its power to transcend social barriers.
“A powerful meditation on how one person can affect the life of another.... One of the great strengths of Reading with Patrick is its portrayal of the risk inherent to teaching.” (The Seattle Times)
“[A] tender memoir.” (O: The Oprah Magazine)
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Critic reviews
"Penetrating, haunting... In all of the literature addressing education, race, poverty, and criminal justice, there has been nothing quite like Reading with Patrick." (James Forman Jr. and Arthur Evenchik, The Atlantic)
"Honest, thoughtful, and humane, Kuo's book is not only a testament to a remarkable friendship, but a must-read for anyone interested in social justice and race in America. Thoughtfully provocative reading." (Kirkus Reviews)
"This memoir of teaching literature in one of the poorest counties in America is a reminder of how literacy changes lives. Highly recommended." (Library Journal)
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God's Not Dead 2
- By: Travis Thrasher
- Narrated by: Dean Gallagher
- Length: 8 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Welcome back to Hope Springs...where Grace Wesley teaches high school history. She is on the hot seat with the school district after she answers Brooke Thawley's question about Jesus during a classroom discussion. Suddenly Brooke becomes a pawn in an epic court case that could cost Grace the career she loves.
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Women's voices should have been done by women.
- By Ceciole on 06-12-20
By: Travis Thrasher
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Find Me Unafraid
- Love, Loss, and Hope in an African Slum
- By: Kennedy Odede, Jessica Posner
- Narrated by: Korey Jackson, Mandy Siegfried, P.J. Ochlan (foreword)
- Length: 11 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Find Me Unafraid tells the uncommon love story between two uncommon people whose collaboration sparked a successful movement to transform the lives of vulnerable girls and the urban poor. With a foreword by Nicholas Kristof.
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A difficult and rewarding listen
- By R. MCRACKAN on 08-23-18
By: Kennedy Odede, and others
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Wilde Lake
- A Novel
- By: Laura Lippman
- Narrated by: Kathleen McInerney, Nicole Poole
- Length: 10 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Luisa "Lu" Brant is the newly elected - and first female - state's attorney of Howard County, Maryland, a job in which her widower father famously served. Fiercely intelligent and ambitious, she sees an opportunity to make her name by trying a mentally disturbed drifter accused of beating a woman to death in her home. It's not the kind of case that makes headlines, but peaceful Howard County doesn't see many homicides.
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In a word saccharine and boring
- By Rena on 05-12-16
By: Laura Lippman
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In the Country We Love
- My Family Divided
- By: Diane Guerrero, Michelle Burford
- Narrated by: Diane Guerrero
- Length: 9 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Diane Guerrero, the television actress from the megahit Orange Is the New Black and Jane the Virgin, was just 14 years old on the day her parents were detained and deported while she was at school. Born in the US, Guerrero was able to remain in the country and continue her education, depending on the kindness of family friends who took her in and helped her build a life and a successful acting career for herself, without the support system of her family.
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Moves very slowly
- By Laura S. on 07-23-16
By: Diane Guerrero, and others
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The Hour I First Believed
- A Novel
- By: Wally Lamb
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 25 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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When high-school teacher Caelum Quirk and his wife, Maureen, move to Littleton, Colorado, they both get jobs at Columbine High School. In April 1999, while Caelum is away, Maureen finds herself in the library at Columbine, cowering in a cabinet and expecting to be killed. Miraculously, she survives. But when Caelum and Maureen flee to an illusion of safety on the Quirk family's Connecticut farm, they discover that the effects of chaos are not easily put right.
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excellent all around yarn
- By G. on 01-10-09
By: Wally Lamb
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The Song and the Silence
- A Story About Family, Race, and What Was Revealed in a Small Town in the Mississippi Delta While Searching for Booker Wright
- By: Yvette Johnson
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 9 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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"Have to keep that smile", said Booker Wright in the 1966 NBC documentary Mississippi: A Self-Portrait. At the time Wright was a waiter in a Whites-only restaurant and a local business owner who would become an unwitting icon of the civil rights movement. For he did the unthinkable: Before a national audience, he described what life was truly like for the Black people of Greenwood, Mississippi.
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Exceeded every expectation
- By ZeeJ84 on 05-23-21
By: Yvette Johnson
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A Chance in the World
- An Orphan Boy, a Mysterious Past, and How He Found a Place Called Home
- By: Steve Pemberton
- Narrated by: Steve Pemberton
- Length: 8 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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A Chance in the World is the unbelievably true story of a wounded and broken boy destined to become a man of resilience, determination, and vision. Through it all, Steve's story teaches us that no matter how broken our past, no matter how great our misfortunes, we have it in us to create a new beginning and to build a place where love awaits.
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Good Book
- By Amazon Customer on 08-19-20
By: Steve Pemberton
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Everybody's Son
- A Novel
- By: Thrity Umrigar
- Narrated by: Josh Bloomberg
- Length: 10 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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During a terrible heat wave in 1991 - the worst in a decade - 10-year-old Anton has been locked in an apartment in the projects, alone, for seven days, without air conditioning or a fan. With no electricity, the refrigerator and lights do not work. Hot, hungry, and desperate, Anton shatters a window and climbs out. Cutting his leg on the broken glass, he is covered in blood when the police find him. Juanita, his mother, is discovered in a crack house less than three blocks away, nearly unconscious and half-naked.
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Engaging and insightful
- By Amazon Customer on 07-12-17
By: Thrity Umrigar
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Accident of Birth
- By: Heather Neff
- Narrated by: Myra Lucretia Taylor
- Length: 13 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Reba Freeman has loved two men in her life. Her current husband, Carl, has supported her through their 20-year marriage and given her all the material wealth a suburban wife could hope for. Reba is comfortable, if not necessarily content, in her life with Carl and their blossoming teenage daughter, Marisa, until she learns that her first love and first husband, Joseph Thomas, has been detained by the World Court of Human Rights.
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Good Listen
- By Tricia on 02-24-08
By: Heather Neff
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Bad Boy
- By: Walter Dean Myers
- Narrated by: Joe Morton
- Length: 4 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Into a memoir that is gripping, funny, heartbreaking, and unforgettable, Walter Dean Myers richly weaves the details of his Harlem childhood in the 1940s and 1950s: a loving home life with his adopted parents, Bible school, street games, and the vitality of his neighborhood. Although Walter spent much of his time either getting into trouble or on the basketball court, secretly he was a voracious reader and an aspiring writer.
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Tough times
- By Megan on 01-30-12
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The 57 Bus
- A True Story of Two Teenagers and the Crime That Changed Their Lives
- By: Dashka Slater
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 5 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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If it weren't for the 57 bus, Sasha and Richard never would have met. Both were high school students from Oakland, California, one of the most diverse cities in the country, but they inhabited different worlds. Sasha, a white teen, lived in the middle-class foothills and attended a small private school. Richard, a black teen, lived in the crime-plagued flatlands and attended a large public one. Each day, their paths overlapped for a mere eight minutes. But, one afternoon, on the bus ride home from school, a single reckless act left Sasha severely burned.
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An Unusual True-Crime Event...Beautifully Written.
- By Mary Burnight on 02-21-18
By: Dashka Slater
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Picking Cotton
- Our Memoir of Injustice and Redemption
- By: Jennifer Thompson-Cannino, Erin Torneo, Ronald Cotton
- Narrated by: Richard Allen, Karen White
- Length: 7 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Jennifer Thompson was raped at knifepoint by a man who broke into her apartment while she slept. She was able to escape and eventually identified Ronald Cotton as her attacker. Ronald insisted that she was mistaken - but Jennifer's positive identification was the compelling evidence that put him behind bars. After 11 years, Ronald was allowed to take a DNA test that proved his innocence. He was released after serving more than a decade in prison for a crime he never committed.
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Listen for the story not the writing
- By Professor Sombrero on 06-13-09
By: Jennifer Thompson-Cannino, and others
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The Priority List
- A Teacher's Final Quest to Discover Life's Greatest Lessons
- By: David Menasche
- Narrated by: David Menasche
- Length: 4 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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David Menasche lived for his work as a high school English teacher. His passion inspired his students, and between lessons on Shakespeare and sentence structure, he forged a unique bond with his kids, buoying them through personal struggles while sharing valuable life lessons.
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Truly Inspiring!!
- By Trish on 07-13-14
By: David Menasche
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Ordinary Light
- A Memoir
- By: Tracy K. Smith
- Narrated by: Tracy K. Smith
- Length: 11 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Tracy K. Smith has a fairly typical upbringing in suburban California: the youngest in a family of five children raised with limitless affection and a firm belief in God by a stay-at-home mother and an engineer father. But after spending a summer in Alabama at her grandmother's home, she returns to California with a new sense of what it means for her to be Black: from her mother's memories of picking cotton as a girl in her father's field for pennies a bushel to her parents' involvement in the Civil Rights Movement.
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Simply spoken - poetic
- By CarolynneRHarris on 04-27-15
By: Tracy K. Smith
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After the Eclipse
- A Mother's Murder, a Daughter's Search
- By: Sarah Perry
- Narrated by: Emily Woo Zeller
- Length: 13 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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A fierce memoir of a mother's murder, a daughter's coming-of-age in the wake of immense loss, and her ultimate mission to know the woman who gave her life.
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True crime memoir
- By Julie on 11-03-17
By: Sarah Perry
What listeners say about Reading with Patrick
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Lorraine Salmon
- 11-14-17
Fantastic book with an upsetting reminder we have much to do
Michelle Kuo gives us personal a view into a frightening reality ... one that civil rights in America has not yet righted ... one we’d like to think didn’t exist. Haunting. Loved it. But it’s haunting me.
Strongly recommend this read.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Mark
- 12-06-18
Good telling of an inspiring true story
Michelle Kuo has a Harvard degree and defers law school for a year to join Teach For America and work in the Mississippi delta of Arkansas. She works in a poor school for kids (mostly black) who have failed in other schools. In this memoir, Kuo learns how to deal with these challenging students and begins to make a difference in their lives. Patrick is one of her great successes. Fast forward three years. Kuo is ready to graduate from law school when she hers that Patrick is changed with murder. She returns to the delta to help in any way she can. Visiting Patrick each day in jail, she resumes his aborted education. This is an incredibly inspiring story, filled with pain and joy. Kuo's telling of it is good, not great, but her story is so interesting that I would rate this a solid 4.5 stars. This stayed with me even after finishing. Kuo reads the book herself. While not polished, I liked her genuine voice. It might have been better with a professional, or maybe not. I liked this book a lot, regardless. I am a teacher, and found this story real and inspiring.
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- Amazon Customer
- 08-21-17
didn't love it; didn't hate it
Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?
I might recommend the book, not the audible version.
How did the narrator detract from the book?
The narrator was my biggest problem. Her voice quality resonated with nasality and her delivery rate often had me on the out-of-control speeding train. Alas, I wanted to find out what happened in the end and I wanted to get there quickly, so I could discontinue hearing the nasal performance. However, reaching the end at the speed of light was not what I had in mind either...a rock and a hard place, to be sure!
If this book were a movie would you go see it?
no
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- Vistarina
- 11-13-18
Transcendence
This book moves the hearts and open the minds. Amid the daily noises and fog of fights, it clarifies where we stand in our struggles for true equality and justice.
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- storyteller
- 04-26-18
a teacher's impact
Would you consider the audio edition of Reading with Patrick to be better than the print version?
I did not read the printed version
Who was your favorite character and why?
Patrick seemed real and his life experiences were like many young men in his situation. I don't know many other teachers that would have made the choices this teacher Kuo did.
What does Michelle Kuo bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?
It was her story to tell and it was done with humbleness. Her voice added credence to the telling.
If you could give Reading with Patrick a new subtitle, what would it be?
Reciprocal impacts of student and teacher relationships(not a good title but tells the story)
Any additional comments?
It was important to have Kuo's story told in her own voice yet it was a difficult narration for me to connect with. I was slow to connect with the characters and the telling sometimes got in the way of the flow and connections for me. I am glad that I read it and look forward to discussions with others regarding the cultural and social implication of the story.
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- Scott
- 04-04-20
A great story. A reminder of what teaching is about
I have been for most of my adult life involves in education. For many years a teacher and then as an administrator of education programs. Ms. Kuo’s simple telling of this story touched me deeply. Reminding me of all that made teaching a passion when I was a young teacher. Her story telling of her life and Patrick’s reminding me of the relationship between subject, student, teacher and life that makes teaching an essential practice. For that I offer her and Patrick deep felt thanks. Then there is the other aspect of this book. The reckoning and description of race in the homeland of my family. An intimate portrait of a life I see dimly as if on the other side of a frosted window. The life of one who’s life is shaped by the lingering actions of my families distant past. Ms.Kuo’s description of her life and Patrick’s and the simple description of racism is profound.
Ms.Kuo’s writing is clean and direct. Accessible and moving. Read this book.
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- Rick Wheeler
- 08-01-19
An Inspiring True Tale of the Power of Teaching
As a life long educator, I found Kuo's story profound and moving. It displays the bond that can form between a teacher and student, so both may grow and learn from each other. Some have criticized Kuo for her presentation, but I appreciate when authors narrate her/his own work.
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- colprubin
- 12-19-18
Terrible narrator
The narrator on this book, the author, really ruined the book for me. Her voice was nasal and flat in tone, which completely ruined the listening experience. The story was fairly interesting, but not the "wow" factor I had been told by others. Maybe I would have had a different experience if I had read the book.
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- crazyoaks
- 12-07-18
Why
I cannot figure out why this is regarded as a good book. The author tends to insert questions, her feelings, and her beliefs in the middle of all her stories. The chapters then are long, long, long.
I managed to listen to the author read but her voice grated on my nerves and some of the pronunciations of words drove me crazy.
Just my opinion, but I have read better books and I have listened to better narrators.
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