“Why do you like this book? What sets this aside from the others that you have read?” said by my 12th grade English teacher Mr.Green. At the time I finished a book called Almond by Won-pyung Sohn and this was around when senior year was starting so I still was getting a chance to learn about my new teachers for the year. Mr. Green was my AP Literature teacher and for our first assignment we had to write about ourselves in a similar way to our introduction paragraphs for this class. In my essay I mentioned myself liking books and brought up how I was almost done reading Almond. When I got my paper back, the one comment I remember were the questions, “why do you like this book?” and “what sets this aside from the others that you have read?”
I remember saying that the reason I liked this book was because of how it was narrated throughout by Yunjae and how because it was narrated by Yunjae, we got to be in his head when he has to deal with life changing events. I told him the reason why I set Almond apart from other books is that since Yunjae has a condition called Alexithymia which impacts his ability to feel emotions, when ever something traumatic happens to him, Yunjae reacts in a manner that someone who wouldn’t have his condition wouldn’t react, so while reading I would get left in a way of not knowing how to feel. It was a book that left me conflicted because my thoughts and feelings never matched his. After this Mr. Green had always let me and my friends rant and debate about books even giving us recommendations and when we would finish he would want to hear our opinions on those books. This meant a lot to me since when it came to reading, when quarantine was ending I stopped the back to back reading that I was so into doing and since for junior year a lot was happening, I ended up losing my habit of reading. So when senior year came Mr. Green was one of the only teachers that was engaged with what books me and my friends were currently reading. This just made reading more fun because of how he would let us debate and write about what we wanted to.
The last book I got to read in that class was the silent patient. That literature class got me back into reading and I will forever be grateful.
