A Child is a Poem You Learn by Heart: A Memoir in Verse

South Carolina 1940s. A farmers daughter marries her fathers hired hand and the two of them have Paulette a child who will grow up on her own in the 1950s and 60s. In an era when divorce was rare Paulettes mother was married three times and struggled to care for her daughter working at a drugstore by day and a bar by night. With little education and a difficult childhood herself Paulettes mother had little knowledge about parenting. When the author was a toddler her mother left her in the home of strangers for four years and removed her from that home a stable environment at age six. She brought Paulette into a world of poverty and dysfunction. During their travels from Virginia to Colorado and South Carolina Paulette attended many different schools including four different schools in first grade. At at six Paulette spent nights alone in their apartment leafing through her mothers True Confessions magazines and listening to 78 rpm records while dancing with her shadow. This is the true story of her mothers trial-and-error approach to parenting her poor choices and the ways they affected her daughter. When her mother married for the third time security and a better life seemed to be within reach but Paulette realized that her mother viewed her as an obstacle to happiness. When she was sixteen she had never read a book cover to cover but her tenth grade English teacher encouraged her with a few kind words. After reading Daphne du Mauriers novel Frenchmans Creek she could not get enough of reading. Another English teacher encouraged her to write and her history teacher encouraged her to think for herself and to speak her mind. Her powerful honest yet loving memoir in verse demonstrates the power of a teachers words and their effect on a young life. The author lived a childhood of loneliness and emotional abuse until she found her voice and the road to her future as an influential award-winning teacher. In this inspirational collection of expressive free verse Whitehurst shares her coming of age story of perseverance persistence and forgiveness. This book is captivating eliciting both tears and laughter an outstanding Southern Memoir.