I had never heard of Jo Ann Beard or her critically acclaimed memoir The Boys of My Youth or her most famous essay, "The Fourth State of Matter" (on the 1991 University of Iowa shootings), until March 2015. I picked it up because I was in the mood to binge-read as many memoirs as possible. I foun...
We were supposed to try on our band uniforms a week ago, after school, but the music room was crammed to the hilt with folding chairs and music stands and there was nobody to guard the door. Just holding them up over our clothes, it was hard to tell how they’d fit. Now we know. ...