Irony of Difficult Circumstances as a Hindrance to Success
Growing up the author considered himself to have received a number of difficulties that prevent him from becoming successful. He considered his race as a hindrance, being born African-American during a time before the Civil Rights movement. His parents were poor, he had a speech impediment, and he lived in one of the roughest parts of town. Thankfully, his teachers had taught him how to channel all his frustrations into reading and writing and eventually he would come to draw upon his experiences growing up—especially the difficulties—that would land him both commercial success and a key contributor to the education of young men and women for years to come.
Irony of Self-Defense
The author was singled out by bullies as a child because of his speech impediment. Initially, he responds to the bullying passively, enduring it until he eventually snaps responding to the violence he receives with violence. In defending himself however he is immediately and unfairly labelled as a “problem child” and a “rebel” and receives harsh, corporal punishment from the school authorities for being a troublemaker. This experience serves to reinforce a thought that had been growing in the young author’s mind: “life is unfair.”
Irony of Bullying
Bullied for his speech impediment the author often resorted to violence to silence the bullies and because he didn’t know how to process his frustrations or the appropriate tools to express his emotions. His teachers however saw that there was more to him than just a kid with a temper problem and they encouraged him to channel his frustrations into reading, so that he would grow his vocabulary and so that his mind would be stimulated, and writing, almost like a meditative exercise where he could sit and sort out his thoughts and emotions and transform his frustrations into words rather than provoking others into fistfights. It is ironic that his experience of bullying would become the catalyst that would turn him into a successful writer in the future.
Irony of the “Masculine Identity”
The author found great comfort and joy in reading books and cultivating his rich imagination. In fact he would even comment that the “me”—meaning the sense of self that was being most comfortable and most happy reading books and dreaming up stories—was truly the self that he he identified with rather than the “me”—the rough and tumble persona that he had crafted and adopted who seemed to enjoy playing basketball on the streets—that he had to assume most of the time. He often felt conflicted with how he should behave around his peers and actually downplayed his love for books and reading as that was seen as something effeminate and unbecoming of young men. This culture of toxic masculinity is an unfortunate facet of life that the author must endure.
Irony of Cultural Identity
The author was asked by Dr. Holiday, a man that he greatly respected, a very controversial and very thought-provoking question: “do you like being black?” The question was not intended to berate him but rather to frame the cycle of thinking that had trapped Myers for years. Deep inside he was struggling with an internal conflict of what it meant to be a Black man. For many years his people were fed the idea that their race was primarily built for manual labor and manual labor alone. Agreeing with that thought meant that he would never rise about blue collar work, but if he disagreed with it, he was afraid that it would also mean denying part of his identity. This internal conflict also formed around the reality that although he was gifted as a writer he had no access to the resources needed to grow his talents such as better education.
