Here I Am a Writer - Christopher McIlroy - Bog

Here I Am a Writer contains poems and stories produced by teacher Christopher "Kit" McIlroy's Native American students involved in the school ArtsReach program in Arizona. A decade or more after these intensive writing sessions took place, McIlroy went in search of the young writers who'd opened their hearts in his classes, to see how they'd fared in the intervening years and if they were still writing at all. What he chronicles is as much his journey of discovery as theirs. While the unifying focus of the book is writing, how these amateur writers' talents were uncovered, how they touched audiences and were then themselves affected by the experience is paramount. The simple strength of Here I Am a Writer lies in the authors themselves, their lives and writings. Readers will be first struck by the poems and stories-their emotional power, their skill, and for some readers, the intrigue of the Native American viewpoint-then absorbed by the struggle for existence and meaning, the common human story, that lies behind them. These are remarkable people, unsung, who deserve to be known. Acclaimed Acoma author Simon Ortiz calls the book "moving, powerful...highly recommended."