A memoir of friendship, a coming-of-age story for both a young teacher and a teenage student, and an expansive meditation on education, cross-racial solidarity, and justice in the rural South

At the local jail of Phillips County, Arkansas, one of the poorest counties in the United States, Michelle and her former student Patrick spend seven months poring over classic novels, poems, and historical narrative by Frederick Douglass, C.S. Lewis, Marilynne Robinson, James Baldwin, W.S. Merwin and more. Patrick reads and writes daily, writing letters to his daughter and discovering new worlds both inside and outside of himself. 

In her time reading with Patrick, Kuo is herself transformed as she contends with the questions of what it is we owe each other and how starkly economic and racial inequality determine our life outcomes. What social transformation is necessary to change a life? And what kind of connection can two people make when there exists such dramatic inequality between them?

At its heart Reading with Patrick is a meditation on how education changes the experience of incarceration and the limits of that change. As Michelle puts it in The New York Times, her book is an “intimate story about the failure of the education and criminal justice systems and the legacy of slavery; about how literature is for everyone, how books connect people, and the hope that with enough openness and generosity we can do the hard work of knowing each other and ourselves.”

READING WITH PATRICK has been released in the US (Penguin Random House), UK (Pan MacMillan), Japan (Hakusuisha), and Taiwan (Locus). Rights have also been sold to China (Citic) and the book is forthcoming in South Korea.

Order in paperback or ebook now (US)

Order the Taiwanese translation (陪你讀下去)

大塊 Locus

金石堂 Kingstone

三民書局 Sanmin

Online 博客來

A portion of the book's royalties have been set aside for several funds, including a personal fund for Patrick and a college fund for his daughter. If you are interested in exploring avenues to contribute to the Delta and to prison education, please get in touch.