Considering how many 9th graders across the country get their first taste of "protest literature" of sorts by sampling Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird wherein they glimpse into the old world of the deep south through the eyes of a precocious young white girl named Scout Finch, as a high school English instructor who has taught TKAM for many years now, I keep wondering about what other work of American fiction to pair with this work so that readers might be shown a similar set of circumstances, but through the eyes of an equally perceptive youthful narrator who doesn't happen to be white. The most obvious nominee, for my money at least, would be Richard Wright and his great memoir, Black Boy, the time-frame of which actually precedes Lee's novel by several years and, in my humble opinion, offers a wider swath of territory, nuance and prescient insight...
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