The Continuing Legacy of TKAM
Somemonths ago, my dear friend, poet and author Mary Langer Thompson, sent me acopy of the book pictured above, Why To Kill a Mockingbird Matters. I amdeeply indebted, as reading Tom Santopietro’s fascinating review of the writingof the novel and the making of the film reminded me once again how much I lovethis book.
Tenyears old and starved for books that were slightly more advanced than the BobbseyTwins and Little House on the Prairie series my friend Cathy hadoffered, I snuck into the closet where some of my older brother’s books werestored, hoping to find a science fiction or fantasy novel I could get lost in.Instead, I pulled out a tattered paperback with the picture of a bird on thecover. To Kill a Mockingbird. I was a birdwatcher. Why on earth would anyonewant to kill a mockingbird?
InHarper Lee’s words, “Thus began our longest journey together.”
Readingit then, at age ten, I didn’t fully understand all the nuances of racerelations. I was a young white girl living in a predominantly white communityin Southern California. That particular summer was a quiet, lazy one. The fierytumult of the Watts uprising was still a year away.
Whatdid resonate with me the first time I read TKAM—and every time since—was thestory of a girl who was as like me as she was unlike me.
Likeme, Scout was a tomboy. (With my first read, I was ever-so-envious of Scout’soveralls; It would be another ten years before I finally had the buying powerto purchase my first pair at age twenty. I’m nearly seventy now, and I stillwear them often.)
Unlikeme, Scout had a comfortable and close relationship with her father (somethingelse I was envious of).
Butwhat a story! Bored of a summer, Scout, Jem, and Dill spent their daysimagining life inside the Radley home, in the same way my brother, sister, andI would wonder and speculate about the weird neighbors who’d moved in nextdoor, bringing with them a live monkey that roamed freely about the house andregularly attacked and bit the girl our age who lived there.
Inmy initial read, the trial of Tom Robinson seemed to interrupt the flow of thebook, and I didn’t understand most of it, or the chapters about thewell-intentioned but clearly racist (although not to me at the time) missionarysociety or Scout’s very racist third-grade teacher. Happily, the novel returnedto the mysterious figure of Boo Radley in its final pages.
Atsome point in my childhood or adolescence, I saw the movie based on the book. Ihave no memory of how I saw it for the first time; it must have been shown ontelevision. But my emotional memory recalls the tenderness that Atticusextended to his young daughter.
Someyears later, when my own daughter turned ten, I gave her a copy of TKAM for herbirthday. It occurred to me then—since my kid would be reading it—that I shouldread it again, review it from an adult perspective. My, how differently—howmuch more heavily—the story landed on my heart. Now that I had more fullyexperienced the Civil Rights Movement. Now that I had been caught up in raceriots at my high school. Now that I had Black friends. Now that I had childrenof my own, some of them racially mixed.
IfI had loved the novel before, I revered it now.
SoI count myself most fortunate and blessed that, nearly as soon as I beganteaching high school, I was privileged to teach To Kill a Mockingbird aspart of the curriculum. I taught ninth grade for 25 of the 27 years of myteaching career, with multiple sections of ninth grade in any given year. Howmany times now have I read aloud these words, affecting a Southern accent, “Folkscall me Dill” or “Scout, let’s get us a baby” or “Hey, Boo”? I have no idea.How many times have I watched my students as they watched the big reveal of BooRadley in the movie? I have no idea of that number, either. But I can tell youthat, despite having read and seen it over a hundred times now, that scene—whether inthe book or in the film—still brings me to tears.
Inrecent years, TKAM has had its detractors. In my humble opinion, the criticswho focus solely on the plot thread of Tom Robinson miss the mark of HarperLee’s great American novel. As much as we may agonize over the stark truth ofhis situation, the book is not “about” Tom. It’s Scout’s story, one hundredpercent. It’s a coming-of-age tale—albeit based on the harsh realities ofSouthern issues—of a young girl who is, initially, blissfully ignorant of theignorance in her community. She is six and innocent as the story begins, ninewhen it closes, her eyes now having been opened to see some of those thingsthat Atticus would have kept her from seeing, if only he could have.
Sixtyyears on—even after all those years of reading it over and over again to sweetbut squirrely freshmen, even after my lofty graduate classes in Faulkner andO’Neill and the many women writers like Toni Morrison who have brilliantly shifted the landscape in modern literature—TKAM is still my favorite book. Innine years and four months, my great-granddaughter will turn ten. I know exactlywhat gift I will give her for that birthday.
