I want to connect my students to their choices, to show them that the more choices they have, the less they’ll feel like victims. The most difficult part of my job is countering the negative voices in my students’ lives—sometimes even their own parents’ voices—that say they will never make it as students, that education for them isn’t a viable course. You’re so puny, you’re so ugly, you’ll never find a husband. I tell them about my crossed eyes, about my sisters’ silly chant, how the problem wasn’t that they sang these songs to me—the problem was that I believed them. But I don’t let my
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