Map of Ireland

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Mademoiselle Eugénie was the blackest person I'd ever seen. She was tall, with giant, almond eyes, and penciled eyebrows, and her hair sat high and stiff on her head, almost bouffant. On the first day of French class my junior year -- which was not the first day of school -- if you read the paper you know what happened the first day of school in South Boston in 1974; or even if you don't read the paper you probably know because it made the six o'clock news: There was film footage of the White parents lining Day Boulevard, throwing rocks at the buses, people we knew, Patty Flynn's ma -- just the back of her head -- but we recognized her from the bright red car coat. I can't remember any classes from that week, or the week after, just the yellow buses crawling up the hill: South Boston High sits up high on a hill, Telegraph Hill, and you can see the water from the top of the school steps; you can see cold, dirty, boatless Boston Bay. On the first day of French class that I can remember, the color shone off Mademoiselle Eugénie's skin, and I realized then, for the first time, that bla ... read full excerpt from: Map of Ireland, A Novel ebook