A letter looking for someone · Someone who helped me
Miss Dolores · Flushing library, 2011
Sent Nov 12, 2026
- Where & when
- Flushing Main Street Library · New York · United States 2011–2012 the table at the back of the children’s room
- About them then
-
Miss Dolores · about 53 then
The children’s librarian at Flushing who ran a free after-school English hour for kids who had just arrived. A short woman in her fifties with reading glasses on a beaded chain, a Puerto Rican lilt, and a bottomless candy jar on her desk.
- Who I was then
- The skinny twelve-year-old from Vietnam who sat at the end of the table and never said a word for six weeks.
- Why I'm writing
- To say thank you · Just hoping my words reach them
I arrived in New York in the autumn of 2011 speaking about thirty words of English. After school I hid in the library because it was warm and nobody asked me anything. You noticed. You started leaving a picture book on the chair next to mine, and never once asked me to read it aloud. By spring I was reading to the little ones on Saturdays. I am a teacher now myself, because of that chair.
Passed on by 0 · reached step 0 · 0 keeping an eye out