You Can Read It But You Ain't Gonna Like It

by Randy Brooker

“You Can Read It But You Ain’t Gonna Like It”

This was the warning that Blake gave me as he handed over his Chromebook. He had been writing for days, showing a level of perseverance I wasn’t used to from him, but had hidden his writing from me completely.

This was my first year at the Equity program, though, and I was determined to be successful.  I knew that I was dealing with a rougher group of kids than I was used to and my instinct told me that building community would be a priority if we were going to work well together.  I thought we could do this by writing personal narratives, and so I let Blake build his fortress in the corner, hide his screen from me, and resigned myself to reminding him two or three times a class to put his phone away.

So on that day, when he finally relinquished his writing to me, refusing to make eye contact and with the warning, “You can read it but you ain’t gonna like it,” I thanked him and braced myself.  I reminded myself to be a generous reader. I reminded myself that personal narrative is, well, personal, and for Blake to share something personal was a big step.

His writing was a stream of consciousness rant, which used profanity and warned me not to pity him or criticize the language or the mechanics and not to doubt anything in the story.  I had a hard time remaining detached as I read about domestic abuse & alcoholism in his family, about his own struggles with drugs at a young age, about the neat little rows of scars on his legs and how he was eventually taken away from his mother to be raised by his grandmother.   

I immediately loved the writing.  It was raw.  It had such powerful sense of voice.  I saw in the writing hope and a sense of stoicism I hadn’t expected from Blake, or any boy his age who had been through what he had been through.  I was immediately reminded of Rule of the Bone, by Russell Banks.

As it turns out, Blake did not want any feedback on his writing and he didn’t want to spend any time revising once he finished. I was ok with it this, though.  Maybe he wasn’t writing this story for me.  Maybe it was for him.  Maybe he had emotionally done all he could with it and needed to leave it behind.  The fact is, he made himself extremely vulnerable by writing a draft at all.  I bought him a copy of Rule of the Bone which he tucked into his backpack, and with a quick “thanks” left my room.