Bad Boy

For the first marking period this year, I chose Walter Dean Myers' Bad Boy as the book my sixth-graders would read. I had never read the book before, but it tied in to their assignment of writing a personal narrative, as Bad Boy is a memoir. Also, it was a narrative written by an African-American man who had a troubled childhood, which I thought some of my students could identify with. Also, it was short and we had plenty of copies.

I don't think my students cared much for it--some of it was way over their heads--but I thought it was terrific. I think it's one of the best descriptions of how someone is inspired to be a writer I've ever read, and how literature can be inspiring. These parts of the book probably didn't reach most of my kids. Instead they probably liked the passages where Myers gets into trouble.

Myers had an interesting childhood. His mother died when he was very young, and he was sent to live with his natural father's first wife and her second husband, so the people he would know as Mama and Dad were not blood relatives. He grew up in Harlem during the '40s and '50s, loving the Dodgers, gaining a love of literature, and writing. He also loved fighting and wasn't much for school.

Myers tells some funny tales that had me wondering aloud to my kids, "Does this sound like a good idea?" He decides to grab hold of the bumper of a taxi, gets his sleeve caught, and gets dragged along the road, covering his body in bruises and scrapes. The tale turns dark when he blames his mother for beating him, which angers his father. His normal response to slights or insults is to punch someone in the face. He grows up with a speech impediment, and hits a class clown for making fun of him (that would be Johnny Brown, who would eventually find success as a comedian).

Myers touches upon race as he becomes aware of it. He grows up in a black neighborhood, but has a white friend and white teachers. "My answer to the question of race was to reject my identity as a black and take another identity. I could not identify myself as white, or as any other race. I could identify myself as an intellectual, and this what I did, telling myself over and over again what white teachers so often told me, that race didn't matter if you were bright." He only senses prejudice when he is not invited to parties his friend is invited to, and doesn't really know what it is to "be black." He also wonders what it is to be a man, as he is more interested in books that girls.

Myers, though labeled a bad boy, is clearly intelligent, and has a teacher who gets him into a special program. He gets into Stuyvesant High School, but though he is inspired by a writing teacher (he is especially grateful that she has him read Camus' The Stranger) he misses school weeks at a time, disappointed in himself. He's so detached from school that when he finally decides to go back toward the end of his senior year he finds that the school year is over.

My favorite parts of the book are his meditations on writing, and how he grew as a writer."I found, stumbled upon, was led to,or was given great literature. Reading this literature, these books, led me to the canvas of my own humanity. Along the way I encountered values that I accepted, primarily those that reinforced by early religious and community mores. My reading ability led me to books, which led me to ideas, which led to more books and more ideas. The slow dance through the ideas led to writing." Very well said. I would recommend this book to any young person who shows an interest in reading and writing, especially if they feel like an outcast.