The book that made me an English major

I became an English major before I even knew there was such a thing as an English major, and it was all because of a not very good book and a very good teacher

Time: Autumn, 1982

Place: Homestead High School, B Building, second floor

If you’ve been here for a while (as a reader of this Substack, I mean, not at Homestead High School in the early 1980s), you may remember that I was not even supposed to go to Homestead High School. You can read more about my school placement shenanigans here, but what you need to know for the purposes of this story is that in my freshman year at Homestead High School, I was enrolled in Ms. Sportello’s English class.

Ms. Sportello had a short, sensible haircut and wore slacks and did not smile often and snapped at students who annoyed her and was not feminine and approachable in the way that Madame Goff, who taught French and wore heels and sleek dresses and lipstick, was feminine and approachable. The first book we read in Ms. Sportello’s class was Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, which she told us was one of Shakespeare’s most boring plays but included in every high school literature curriculum because it had no sex …