THE 40-YEAR-OLD SHAKESPEARE VIRGIN

Growing up, the Bard was for white kids. Now in his forties, our columnist—professor, novelist, Pulitzer Prize winner—reads his plays for the first time. And guess what?

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IN THE YEAR OF OUR LORD 2024, I guested on The Black-est Questions, a trivia podcast, and—put some 'spect on my name, please—got all five questions right.

The last question: “Since the 1950s, when public segregation in schools became illegal, this Portland high school has been at the center of controversy,” said the show’s host, Dr. Christina Greer. “It has faced repeated attempts of closure, and as the only predominately Black high school in the entire state, it’s been a pressure point for Black community activists. Can you name this high school?”

“Do you know that I graduated from Jefferson High School?” I answered. “In Portland, Oregon. Class of '93, baby.”

“Oh my God,” she said, as her producers added alarm sounds. “For more than 100 years Jefferson High School has served most of Portland’s Black community...and continues to struggle with funding and maintenance.”

Having my high school’s perennial crucibles turned trivia made me reflect on what I might’ve missed as a student. Maybe because he’s been deified as the incontrovertible Almighty of Western letters, I thought of Shakespeare and why I hadn’t read him back then.

Could it be that the absence hinged on who made up most of the student body: Black kids, no few of them underprivileged and at risk? That my teachers decided rigorous discussions of his work would be beyond our capabilities? That they figured it more fitting—though I don’t recall reading James Baldwin or Toni Morrison or August Wilson in those days—to assign contemporary and/or Black writers? That they believed his work wouldn’t hold our attention, besieged as it was? That they sided with those who nix him from classrooms for offering too little with which today’s student can identify? Was it a simple lack of resources? Or could it have been that our stubbornness had beat them into forsaking our promise? Whatever their reasons, my never-prime-salad days turned me away from the Bard.