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As I began to compile my notes to write this chapter, I could not shake some of the childhood memories that came back to me. I was taken back to my junior year of high school, where I recalled the feeling of dread that would overcome me as I walked into my English Advanced Placement class. It seemed that no matter how persistent my efforts to succeed in that class, I could never connect to the themes, and find the profound literary connections I was expected to find as we analyzed the great US-American literary works. As I persevered through The Grapes of Wrath, The Scarlet Letter, Native Son, and other works of literature, my repeated poor grades on my assignments reminded me of my “Otherness.” While most of my peers were able to connect the necessary biblical references to these texts, I remained confused and clueless. Ironically, when we began to read The Odyssey, and I compared this epic story to the …