The poet and writer José Olivarez gives us this essay about his life and educational experience in “Maybe I Could Save My Life by Writing Poetry.” He writes of the perceptions of the school system when his parents first took him to school, his experience of going back to Mexico and returning, and finally, how writing and finding his own voice gave him a sense of ownership over his own life.

Writing shifted my relationship to education and power. After I started writing, I stopped being interested in models of education that didn’t consider me an active participant. In class, I got in trouble for the first time. Some teachers complained that I talked too much. Other teachers reveled in my growth. It made school harder. When I passively accepted everything I was taught as fact, school was easy for me. I just had to memorize a bunch of information. Now, I asked myself to understand what stories were being left out? From whose perspective were we being taught? How else could we write the story?

From, José Olivarez’s  “Maybe I Could Save My Life by Writing Poetry”

City Tech was fortunate to bring José Olivarez for our Literary Arts Festival in 2019! Want more? In the video below, José Olivarez reads his poem “Mexican-American Disambiguation” from his book (citizen) (illegal).