A Comedy & a Tragedy

In this powerful memoir, former bicycle messenger and acclaimed author of The Immortal Class recounts his difficult journey to literacy.A Comedy & A Tragedy is the story of one young man's effort to teach himself to read. Complex and many-leveled, this book is also a manifesto about the acquisition of intellectual independence. It is a plea to better understand the impact of dysfunctional family dynamics in education, and a passionate indictment of a broken school system that lets so-called problem kids slip through the cracks.When Travis Hugh Culley moves with his family to Miami in the spring of 1980, the bright six-year-old hopes things will be easier for him. Instead, he is dubbed a "bird brain" by his older brother and classified by his new teachers as a discipline problem. Travis fakes his way through tests and homework assignments, mimicking his fellow students and pretending to know how to read. When his music teacher suggests...