Book Review: Honky

(1)   Your points of disruption--places in the book that cause you to feel uncomfortable or angry or curious.

This book was full of disruptions for me.  One of the first came from the fact that I was so fascinated by the idea of a family in the 1960’s where no one worried about color or sexual orientation.  They were so open, and the fact that I thought of that as unusual was a disruption.  Why is it that having a family where a white mom will go out and protest for the black people, and where she commonly found herself on dates with homosexual men because she didn’t see them any different, seems so rare to me? Or where a little girl at a birthday party who gets upset because the other girls are talking bad about “niggers” seemed surprising to me.  I thought it was so cool that they could see blacks as equals, where that should be a normal, everyday thing, not a rarity.

I also began to be bothered by the fact that Dalton was discriminated against for being the only white kid in the neighborhood.  When the boy at the baseball field took his glove, I was mad and realized that I blamed part of the theft on the fact that he was black.  It wasn’t until just now as I thought about that instance that I realized that I had been racial profiling. I pictured all these black kids, ganging up on the white kid and that makes me much more upset than the idea of a bunch of white kids picking on the black kid.   The more I think about it and study racial discrimination, the more I realize that I’m not past it, that I still have a sense of superiority to those of other ethnicities, and that realization is a huge disruption.  Just as much so, is the realization that I’m not sure what I can do about it.

(2)   Descriptions of the stories from the book clarify or provide examples of the ideas we have been discussing in class.

An obvious example of an idea we’ve been discussing in class would be the topic of discrimination.  Dalton was treated differently throughout the whole book because he was a white kid in a minority neighborhood.  Institutional racism and discrimination were particularly prominent as he changed from school to school.  At elementary school, he was not necessarily favored, but he was treated better because of his color.  If the teacher would have hit him like she did the rest of the students, there would have been more danger of being turned in and taken to court.  This pattern continued as he moved from school to school, always being treated better than the minority students he hung out with.

Another idea that we talked about that was I read the book was the idea of privilege.  When he was with his friend and caught the house on fire, he talked about how if he had been in a different neighborhood or if his skin was a different color, he would have been in more trouble, but because of where he was and who he was, there was no punishment. 

One thing that I found interesting was his lack of materials at home.  In class, we talked about how often, kids who come from lower income backgrounds will have lower testing levels because of lack of exposure. This was something I recognized when he stole the comic books from the store. Granted they were comic books and it is possible that they had other books in the home, but from what we learned, he had to steal in order to bring literature into his home.

(3) How the stories from the book will influence your thinking about your future work as a teacher.

One of the hardest parts of the book for me to read was when he was in school and the teachers were so prejudice against the black kids.  Dalton was treated so different from his black friends.  When they were in the lunch room and his friend got hit in the head by the supervisor, I was frustrated for him, not only because no child should ever be hurt in school, but because the racism was happening without any punishment towards the supervisor.  As I read this, I realized the importance of making my classroom a safe place for all students.  I never want a student to be afraid, either of me or of the other students.  I want them to feel comfortable and open and not have fears.  When Dalton was afraid to go to the bathroom as a young child, my heart was broken.  No child should ever have to suffer while at school, and I need to make it my goal as a teacher to make sure nothing like that ever happens.