“Reading- With”: The Ethics of Vulnerability, Equality, and Contrition in Michelle Kuo’s Reading with Patrick: A Teacher, A Student, and a Life- Changing Friendship

Ilana M. Blumberg

doi:10.1080/08989575.2025.2460848

“Reading- With”: The Ethics of Vulnerability, Equality, and Contrition in Michelle Kuo’s Reading with Patrick: A Teacher, A Student, and a Life- Changing Friendship

Ilana M. Blumberg

Department of English Literature and Linguistics

Bar-Ilan University

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

Abstract

Michelle Kuo’s teacher memoir, Reading with Patrick, negotiates ethical challenges of representing a vulnerable subject. As a teacher-turned-writer, Kuo could not rely upon journalistic or social-scientific ethics. Kuo’s ethical debates, regarding both text and commodity, suggest broader bounds for the object of study in life writing, including its full epitext.

Original language	English
Journal	a/b: Auto/Biography Studies
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1080/08989575.2025.2460848
State	Accepted/In press - 2025

Keywords

Teacher memoir
education and life writing
epitext;
ethics and life writing
vulnerable subjects

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

Cultural Studies
History
Literature and Literary Theory

Access to Document

10.1080/08989575.2025.2460848

Cite this

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title = "“Reading- With”: The Ethics of Vulnerability, Equality, and Contrition in Michelle Kuo{\textquoteright}s Reading with Patrick: A Teacher, A Student, and a Life- Changing Friendship",

abstract = "Michelle Kuo{\textquoteright}s teacher memoir, Reading with Patrick, negotiates ethical challenges of representing a vulnerable subject. As a teacher-turned-writer, Kuo could not rely upon journalistic or social-scientific ethics. Kuo{\textquoteright}s ethical debates, regarding both text and commodity, suggest broader bounds for the object of study in life writing, including its full epitext.",

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