The heart-catching stories in Ada Glustein’s memoir, Being Different, tell a universal story about feeling different and longing to belong. She recounts tales of growing up in a Jewish immigrant family during and following World War II, and the experiences that stand out during her school days, not knowing how to fit in to the world beyond home. She reflects on her years of teaching diverse children who also experienced life as “different.” With her deep understanding of the importance of belonging, as seen through her own eyes and through the eyes of the children she encounters, she finds her own sense of belonging through helping those children find theirs.
Ada’s stories are told with humor and pathos: spilling the wine at her family’s Passover seder; slamming down her books when provoked by one of her Masters at teacher’s college; barely holding in her laughter at the antics of the woman who is housing her during her teaching practicum in a rural school; realizing that she has not included the right flesh color for one of her students to make his self-portrait; clutching three barefoot children outside in a blizzard, while waiting for the alarm bells to stop ringing; and, befriending the class bully to help her know that she, too, is an accepted and valued class member.
These stories remind us to embrace the visible and the invisible differences we all share as human beings on this planet.
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