Author visit with Peggy Kern

For our third Fieldwork, we had the author of Little Peach, Peggy Kern, come in and talk to the grade. She came from 8:30- 9:30 and talked to the class about sex trafficking. Peggy showed us a few pictures that she took in Brooklyn of the Pink houses, which is a place where many girls are sold. She also showed us pictures of tattoos that pimps and traffickers give their victims. One of the tattoos said “Drama” in cursive with shakespeare masks around it. I can’t imagine how the girls try to get over this happening to them when they actually carry their traffickers names around for their whole lives. Peggy talked to us about a hotel in Brooklyn that is filled with girls our age being sold into different rooms to have sex with men maybe 20-30 years older than them. When Peggy was talking, I was trying so hard not to just break out into tears. This wasn’t like any other fieldwork. I really felt connected to these girls this time. I felt bad and miserable that I can’t personally help them. And what makes me extremely mad is that some of them are being arrested for prostitution if they can’t prove to the judge that they were sexually attacked; which can be hard to do. I asked Peggy how long she did research before writing the book. She said she went around collecting facts and learning for about a year. What struck me was when Peggy was asked to read a special scene she wrote when Peach had a violent client that was hurting her. I felt somewhat emotional when she was reading it because it was just such a strong and hard scene to have read in my mind but it felt much worse and scarier having Peggy read it out loud. It was just such good writing and I was very impressed. For the Teach In, I really want to incorporate how Peggy presented, emotionally, very well informed and had great example.

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