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February 19, 2019
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David A. Taylor

David A. Taylor is the author of Soul of a People: The WPA Writers’ Project Uncovers Depression America and the writer/producer of the award-winning documentary film of the same name.

Literary Cubs, Canceling Out Each Other’s Reticence

Letters between Federal Writers’ Project cohorts Richard Wright and Nelson Algren depict a mutual admiration rare among young novelists

by David A. Taylor | Sunday, March 01, 2009

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THIS WEEK’S ARCHIVE PICK

School Survival

by Anne P. Beatty

As L.A. teachers prepare to go on strike, we’re revisiting an essay by Anne P. Beatty about her time teaching high school in South Central Los Angeles, where her homeroom class often paused for a moment of silence to mourn students who had died in drive-by shootings. Her students knew that this was not the case in wealthier school districts. “They knew that somewhere there were schools with computers that worked, just as they knew that somewhere it was safe to walk through the streets at night,” Beatty writes. “They knew it wasn’t normal for 16-year-olds to die.” But what she found shocking, her students had to learn to endure. “Apathy was involved in giving in to the violence, and there was despair over the prospect of a better future.”