Author: jesseteller
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Rise of the Storyteller 9: Liechen’s War Part 1
I studied with some of the greatest minds in the gifted program at Washington High School in the summer of 1986. They chose the brightest and the most innovative minds to come out of the Milwaukee Public Schools. Mr. Olsen had recommended me for the gifted program and, knowing my parents would not have filled…
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Rise of the Storyteller 8: Savior
Pride had them. I could see by the clock in the gym there was only two more minutes before the first bell that would call all of us to class. And Pride had planted his feet. Pride and I had gotten into a blistering fight one hot spring day when we were both in first…
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Rise of the Storyteller 7: Strong Urge to Fly
It was after 8 at night. I was in bed, my PJs on, my top sheet pulled up to my chin, my blankets at my feet. It was too hot for blankets that night. The night before fifth grade. The night it was born. The night my mind broke, once again, to form the one…
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Rise of the Storyteller 6: Cloaked in a Mushroom Suit
I was obsessed with black girls. I could stare at them all day, and often did. There was, in my eyes nothing so beautiful, nothing so exotic, and nothing so powerful as a black girl. I told one once that I thought she was pretty. Very sweetly, she thanked me then walked over to a…
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Rise of the Storyteller 5: Punchy
A battered little girl. A panda bear. A set of fists. And a skeptical therapist. We have a lot to do in this chapter so let’s get started. One night I said something to my mother and step dad. Something like I didn’t want to go back to visit Char. Something ominous and haunting before…
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Rise of the Storyteller 4: Matching Blades
I don’t think my second grade teacher, Mrs. Herring, hated children when she started teaching at 20th Street School, but by the time she got to me, I think it was starting to happen. Teaching is a punishing job. You see one kid after the next that you can’t save. Can’t save from bullying, can’t…
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Rise of the Storyteller 3: Brotherhood
I had been hit for no reason. I never saw by who. I was in a crowd, then I felt a swift and sudden punch to the back. Everyone was moving around me. When I turned, I saw so many snarling faces all I could do was keep walking. When we got to the lunch…
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Rise of the Storyteller 2: 20th Street School
Racism is a feature of the human condition that can be studied in many ways. You can see it through the eyes of incarceration. You can see it in the machine of poverty. You can look at racism through the eyes of history, looking at heroes and victims. You can see it in the workplace…
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Rise of the Storyteller 1: Fear and Death
Can’t picture her face. Every day she helped me with my jacket, I can remember that. Every day, when the other kids went to the coat room to put on their jackets, I took mine to my kindergarten teacher and she helped me put it on. I couldn’t work the zipper and she would always…
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The New Girl 23: Death
Shadow did finally kill himself. He wanted it so bad that Smear Lord of Ire gave him a hallucination. Shadow was down on his knees, a trembling knife in his hand. Wrist. Wrist. Thigh. Thigh. On the wall in his dorm room he wrote Corrupter. He was dead for about a day. The afterlife that…
Jesse Teller 