Thomas Wolfe’s novel, “You Can’t Go Home Again,” depicts the tale of an author who writes less than flattering things about his hometown of Libya Hill, and receives a frosty response from local residents who resent the manner in which they’re portrayed.  Nothing from Wolfe’s story resembled the greeting I received at my old alma mater, Niskayuna High School in Schenectady, New York. Students, faculty, and even my former English teacher, T.A. Subramanian turned out to hear me speak about the my book, civil rights history, and life as a writer. 

I think some students found it particularly inspiring to learn that I wasn’t much of a student in high school, but I made sure to stress the fact that I was always reading, and how books had always been my preferred form of escapism.  I ended my photo presentation with an image that pretty much summed up my high school experience.  With a terrible GPA, and a string of college rejection slips that nearly resembled my string of eventual publishing rejections, I showed up on this same stage thirty-four years earlier for the group photo for the National Honor Society members of my class.  Only I showed up on a dare, and basically photobombed the yearbook image with my presence. 

I was a class act in high school, no doubt.  I pointed to fellow classmates in the photo, mentioning some who have gone on to lives of impressive accomplishment.  Then I pointed to the blotch of ink that wiped my presence in history like photos of Trotsky during the Soviet purge. (pre-Photoshop, obviously.) I think if you squint just right you can still tell it’s me in the picture.  Nonetheless, my message was that despite the fact that my academic record in high school was deemed so offensive it warranted my erasure from a group photo of successful students, it was my love of books and stories that eventually enabled me to find my way. 

Here’s the story that ran in my hometown paper, The Schenectady Gazette... http://www.dailygazette.com/news/2014/mar/04/0304_king/