Reading "To Kill A Mockingbird" with a Generation of New Americans

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Those of us who grew up in the United States and attended public schools probably remember reading Harper Lee's novel about racial justice and human dignity "To Kill a Mockingbird" sometime during our middle or high school years. I read it in middle school; most of my classmates were white and a few were African Americans. Now, as a high school English teacher, I am reading this story with students whose faces reflect every continent on the globe. This experience shows me how reading beautiful books can help us recognize universal truths that transcend time and place and culture.


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