on the U train

When I bought the book, I thought it looked too short. But I was already enraptured by Eddie, so I dived right in. A little heavy-handed with how smart and balanced the ‘good’ characters were, but it feels real, like you’re sitting next to the guy and listening to him shoot the shit.

Here’s the bit that killed me, that made me cry:

That book burning made me so mad for two reasons. One, I know so many little kids who never even owned one book of their own and if you gave them one they would wrap it up when you weren’t reading it so it wouldn’t get dusty. And number two, if you burned even one little corner of a page of a book in school they would expel you for good.

I grew up in a Christian household that respected books. And still there were always these hard lines, where you couldn’t read this or couldn’t read that, where you knew the book was gonna disappear into your parents’ room if you were caught reading it. I still managed to read the Harry Potter series from start to finish, even though my parents took one or two of the books from me, and forbade me from reading the rest. So this quote is something I’ll be carrying around for a while, anger included.