Booker T. Washington High School Students and the Norfolk Academy Literacy Fellows

Booker T. Washington High School Students and the Norfolk Academy

Literacy Fellows

No One Can Change Me But Me

Reading & Book Signing

6:00 PM

Thursday, June 8, 2017

No One Can Change Me But Me is a collection of powerful essays that examine the lives and hopes of some of Norfolk’s young writers. Inspired by Colum McCann’s presentation at the ODU Literary Festival this past September, where he spoke about the work of his nonprofit Narrative 4, Elizabeth Johnson and David Kidd, Norfolk Academy English teachers and Co-Directors of the Literacy Fellows Program, and Sharon Davidson-Cook, an English teacher at Booker T. Washington High School, brought their students together to share and write the stories of the moments that have shaped their lives.

For several months, Booker T. Washington students and the Norfolk Academy Literacy Fellows met, exchanged tales of transformative moments in their lives, and then wrote about these moments from each other’s point of view.

These young authors take charge of the narrative of their lives through rethinking, retelling, and deconstructing. Whether articulating the anxiety of entering a new school, chronicling lessons learned on the athletic fields, or depicting a first experience with loss, these essays take readers to the joy and tragedy of adolescent life in Norfolk, Virginia today. Readers can see the astonishingly creative, funny, and powerful young men and women these authors are and are becoming.