Where I’m Writing From eli.cranor@gmail.com January 15, 2023 Eli Cranor is an Arkansas novelist whose debut novel, Don’t Know Tough, is available wherever books are sold. Don’t Know Tough made @USATODAYBooks’s “Best of 2022” list and the @nytimes “Best Crime Fiction” for 2022 Cranor can be reached using the “Contact” page at elicranor.com and found on Twitter @elicranor

I’m writing from the back row of my back-to-school professional development.

Shh. Don’t tell my boss.

If you are my boss, and you happen to be reading this or watching me scribble in my yellow legal pad, please know I am listening. Maybe it helps to think of me as the kid who always doodles in class. In recent years, I’ve been told to let that student keep drawing. Let him do it because the activity helps him listen.

Writing works the same for me.

Derek Clark, aka “Rapping Dad,” is speaking at the front of the room. We’re in the Alexander Juvenile Assessment and Treatment Center. When I’m not writing, I teach English 11 and 12 to high schoolers currently serving time in juvenile correction centers all across Arkansas.

I work mostly from home for an organization called Virtual Arkansas. It’s great, a perfect job for a young novelist who also loves teaching. But on days like today, the day before the start of the spring semester, we all come together. We meet face to face and listen to speakers like Derek Clark.

Right now, Derek’s talking about how he survived the foster care system in Oakland, California from ages 5-18. How his father tried to stomp him out of his mother’s belly when she was 7 months pregnant.

“Broken pieces make masterpieces,” Derek says.

He’s big, six foot five inches tall and built like a Raiders tight end. Derek’s dishing out statistics now. Showing graphs of each state’s ACE (Adverse Childhood Experience) rating. These experiences include divorce, sexual and physical abuse, a wide range of childhood trauma. The bars on the graph represent the number of kids who’ve endured two or more such experiences.

Arkansas is at the top of every list.

It’s surprising, until I remember the students I met my first semester working for Virtual Arkansas. The stories I've heard, the tears and the scars.

Derek Clark has scars, some so deep I have to stop writing this and take a deep breath as he tells us about his father trying to drown him in a toilet and his mother burning the skin off his left hand.

At some point, words fall short. That is true of Derek, and it’s also true of my students, those faces I’ll see tomorrow for the first time in two weeks, some for the first time ever.

It hits me then, why we’ve gathered here together, why they’ve flown the “Rapping Dad” in. His story reflects our students’ collective story, except with one big difference: Derek made it out. He broke the vicious cycle of poverty and abuse.

The climax of Derek’s tale comes as his social worker is on the verge of driving him to a psychiatric institution. He’s too wild to stay in foster homes. No one will adopt him.

But the social worker, a blond woman named Cheryl, goes the extra mile and makes a Hail Mary call to a young couple who agree to keep Derek for one weekend. The couple live on a ranch with horses, pigs, and — young Derek’s favorites — chickens.

48 hours later, Derek’s social worker is back, but the couple decides to keep him for the week. That week turns into a month. That month a year. Then years. Until finally, the young couple become Derek’s new parents.

And do you know what that young couple did to earn a living?

They were teachers, just like the rest of the people gathered around me today.