The Bookstore Curriculum

By Charlie Tyson. José Ferreras was 11 when his grandfather died on Thanksgiving Day. A few weeks before, Ferreras had fallen into an argument with the older man, who was sick with Parkinson’s. He didn’t have a chance to apologize.
“This man, he was the only male figure that I truly had in my life,” Ferreras said. “My father was never around, and I was never really close with my brothers or my cousins, so I just really had my grandfather.”
Now 19, Ferreras is a creative writing major at Southern Vermont College, a 500-student liberal arts institution in Bennington that enrolls many low-income and first-generation students. Read more...