Don Williams asked Jack Gantos:

Hi Jack- Our English 11 classes all read Hole In My Life last year as part of our reader response theory, social class theory, and narrative writing units. Your memoir was a great hit among our students. When you wrote that, what were you hoping young adults would take from it and has that expectation changed since you've become a bit more chronologically gifted? Thanks! Don Williams, Ames High School, Ames, Iowa

Jack Gantos Hi Don, Thanks for using HOLE IN MY LIFE in your classroom and glad the book was a hit with your students. The book is a door to a world I tried to write about honestly. When I wrote the book, of course I knew the smuggling and prison portions were going to be lively and engaging, and readers would be attracted to the surface action of the book. But that was not enough. I wanted the readers, once captured, to go below the surface into the emotional depths of the book and in doing so I wanted them to contemplate their own emotional honesty and motivations behind the decisions they make. The real prison is within and the exit from inner torment is to become emotionally articulate so you don't go through life as some stimulus-response creature that just caroms off one unsatisfying and destructive moment after the next.
This is some of what I wanted to achieve. Thanks, Jack

flag