Ife Ajayi
Prof. Hall
Eng 1121
1 February 2019

Throughout my reading of Gilyard’s book I noticed that his style of writing isn’t too similar to other authors. He wrote this book in a way where people who read it can understand it easily. I feel like some teenagers could probably relate to some of the things that happened to Gilyard when he was younger in a way. With that being said, the way he wrote this is similar to how some teenagers express themselves in writing. When I read some books I usually have trouble understanding points that the author is trying to make because of how sophisticated the language is. While reading some of Gilyard’s book, I could picture some of what he went through because of how understanding his writing is.

Throughout his writing, Gilyard openly expressed some of the things he went through when he was a high school student. He went into detail about certain things that other people would be ashamed to even talk about. This is one thing that I liked about his writing. If you’re going to openly write about something you should go into detail as much as possible or you shouldn’t write about it at all. In the book he stated, “I stole some more, did a little dealing, shot the highest dosages of dope I ever had. Jail was a more likely destination than a university.” These are some things that he did the summer before starting at a university. Things he planned on never doing again.

In future writing, I plan on being more specific especially when storytelling. It’s important to grab the reader’s attention in the beginning of your writing. And it’s just as important for the reader to still be engaged while reading the rest. Gilyard did a good job keeping me interested while reading his writing. Not many authors can do this. I get bored easily while reading. The subject matter of Gilyard’s writing is honestly what kept me going. He wrote about the lifestyle he use to live and how he was involved in drugs and jail. He also wrote about young people of color and how education in America works for them. In a way I felt that I needed to read about this because it related to me.