Several years ago, my brother, a professor at the time, introduced me to a group of university students by saying, "If you knew the Rachel at 16 years old that I knew, you'd expect her to be dead or in prison by now." I had never heard it put this way, but I felt the truth of it right down into my gut. As I write in my recent Times Opinion guest essay, I was expelled from high school, kicked out of my house and homeless for several years in my youth. A fundamental question — how did I survive? — has preoccupied me my entire adult life, professionally as a journalist and writer who covers violence and criminal justice, but also personally as someone who came so close to a very different outcome. Today, there are thousands of young girls and women incarcerated for crimes committed in difficult early-life circumstances. When I read about women like Cyntoia Brown, a trafficking victim who was sentenced to life in prison at 16 years old for first-degree murder and aggravated robbery, I often think that with a slight twist in my luck, I could have had a life more like hers. As a kid I held my own rage, armored myself with my own violent persona. But while Brown was abused and forced to live on the streets or out of cheap hotels, people often opened their homes to me. That I was white and homeless in a middle-class suburb probably helped to shield me from men seeking to exploit vulnerable young girls. What ultimately made a difference for me (and for Brown, in prison) was education. I gravitated toward sociology and literature, seeing myself reflected in the work of Studs Terkel and James Baldwin, in people forgotten or despised by society. But education takes two things: imagining that one's future can be better and the opportunity to make it so. The former is easy; imagination merely requires hope. The latter requires help from someone else. And that's where we must all rise to the challenge.
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2024/07/13
Opinion Today: How I found my way as a high school dropout
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Keep a civil tongue.