A Reason To Believe

A Reason To Believe

Adult memoir
Anyone who enjoys a story of success against the odds will enjoy
Deval Patrick's A Reason To Believe: Lessons From An Improbable Life.
Patrick grew up broke (His grandmother chose this word over poor
because in her mind it implied temporary) on Chicago's South Side.
"Much of life seemed to center on food--getting it, preparing it,
doing without it..." His father took off for New York when he was very
young, leaving his mother alone to raise two children. They ended up
sharing a very small tenement with his grandparents.
"We didn't know to complain. It was home. The notion of having
more than one bathroom or multiple sockets in the kitchen or a window
with a view was not something I thought much about. We were better
off than many. What we had was always orderly, even if our lives were
not, as if making hospital corners on the beds each morning would keep
the economic chaos at bay."
When Patrick was in eighth grade he and his parents had to
choose between three options for continuing his education. Vocational
school lacked a path to college. He was determined to be the first in
his family to take it. Police had a huge presence and teachers were
pretty much glorified disciplinarians in the local high school. The
technical school was inferior to that for the North Side white kids
and unwilling to take a Black teen graduating first in his class.
An educational intervention came just in time to make a
significant difference in Patrick's life. A favorite teacher read
about a program, A Better Chance, that helped students from less
privileged backgrounds get into prep schools. Patrick attended Milton
Academy which seemed to him like another planet. It prepared him for
no less than Harvard and Harvard Law. He eventually was elected
Governor of Massachusetts.
Patrick deserves every bit of praise we can serve up. He worked
hard to make his improbable journey. But his memoir should be
disquieting to those of us who have white privilege. Even today
systemic racism limits the educational prospects of too many Black
children. How can we leverage our privilege, while taking cues from
the Black community, to create powerful and meaningful change?
A mind is a terrible thing to waste.
On a purrrsonal note, I woke up the morning after my vaccine feeling a
little under the weather, but nothing that would have kept me out of
school in pre pandemic times. I'm very glad I didn't get the big
reactions I'd heard about. I'm not tempted to go out where the
weather has taken a turn for blah. I'm just going to rest, read, and
chill with Tobago. (Jules)
Yeah, me, Tobago. Who wouldn't want to chill with the family cat?
I have an opinion piece in the Bangor Daily News for the first time in
ages. It's in celebration of National Library Week which is April
4-10. It's on all libraries do for us and why we must never take them
for granted. (Jules)
A great big shout out goes out to our librarians, guardians of the
flame. Readers appreciate you more than you can imagine.
Tobago and Jules Hathaway




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