“The building itself is hostile: cracked plaster, broken windows, splintered doors and carved up desks, gloomy corridors and metal stairways, dingy cafeteria (they can eat sitting down only in 20 minute shifts) and an auditorium which has no windows. It does have murals, however, depicting mute, muscular harvesters, faded and immobile under a mustard sun.”

—  Bel Kaufmanová , book Up the Down Staircase

Part I, ch. 5 (Sylvia Barrett)
Up the Down Staircase (1965)

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Bel Kaufmanová photo
Bel Kaufmanová 25
American novelist, teacher 1911–2014

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