The Plagiarist

Michael A. Gonzales recalls an unfounded accusation from childhood that galvanized him against plagiarism.

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In late 2023 The Atlantic magazine contributing writer Eliot Cohen, in an article about plagiarism in relation to now resigned Harvard President Claudine Gay, called the offense the “gravest of academic sins." While not a crime that could have the accused thrown in jail, it can destroy your life and standing within the professional community. From poet Ailey O’ Toole to debut novelist Jumi Bello to crime writer A. J. Finn, the subject of plagiarism is often in the news, in essays, and sometimes novels. It’s a subject that enrages me.

A writer since I was a kid, I’ve always been pained by the idea that a person would be bold enough to steal another’s words. It’s especially enraging to me because of a mark that was branded on me in 8^th grade, when teacher Miss Theresa Barry falsely accused me of plagiarizing a poem a few months before graduation.

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In the summer of 1972, when I was headed into the 4^th grade, my mom enrolled me in Catholic school. As an oddball kid I figured I would prefer parochial school over the bougie Black academy from which I’d transferred. Though I’d attended the Modern School for a few years, in 3^rd grade I’d started showing signs of strangeness and can remember hiding under the desk thinking the teacher would forget I was in class when she collected the homework. I think I didn’t have my homework. But more than that, I didn’t like the teacher. She was very rigid and corny. I was always pretending to be sick so I could get out of school on Mondays. The mystery belly ache always happened on Sunday nights right after The Wonderful World of Disney. This went on until mom threatened to take me to a psychologist. I felt little connection with my classmates or the teacher. I’m sure the Modern School was happy that I took my neurosis elsewhere.

My beloved babysitter, Mrs. Harrison, sent her two sons to St. Catherine’s, which was on 153^rd between Broadway and Amsterdam, and was the reason my baby brother and I got squeezed in there. Being enrolled in school automatically made us members of the church, which was next to a rectory beside the school. We started going to Saturday 5pm services, where mom introduced herself to the main priests, Monsieur Richard (pronounced Rich-ard) and Father Bob, a handsome man who reminded me of a holy Robert Redford.

A writer since I was a kid, I’ve always been pained by the idea that a person would be bold enough to steal another’s words. It’s especially enraging to me because of a mark that was branded on me in 8^th grade, when teacher Miss Theresa Barry falsely accused me of plagiarizing a poem a few months before graduation.

School started after Labor Day. A nervous nerd, I felt as though all eyes were on me. The mandatory uniform was a white button-down shirt, tie, and jacket with dress slacks. Mom walked me to class that first day and met the teacher, Sister Karen. A short, stout woman with a gentle voice, she was rather sweet in comparison to some of the other nuns.

Because of changes that had taken place within the Catholic Church, the nuns no longer were forced to wear the Habits, and Latin was no longer spoken during mass. The only nuns who wore the Habit were Sister Angela, the singular Black teacher, and Sister Regis, the meanest woman in the building. She taught 3^rd grade, sold Avon beauty products on the side, and wasn’t above embarrassing kids whose moms were late paying for their products.

Many of my classmates had known one another since first grade, and I felt like an interloper. However, with the exception of a few run-ins with class bully Tom Lowe and his partner in petty crime, William Merritt, the transition went somewhat smoothly. There were a few setbacks, which included being sent to a remedial reading class taught by an outside instructor, a young wanna be actor who came twice a week and worked out of a small room next to the cafeteria.

Michael A. Gonzales, left, at 11 in 1974 with his brother, Carlos, then 9.

I didn’t really have a problem, but because I was too shy to read aloud in class it was assumed that my skills were shoddy. After reading to the remedial teacher from a textbook he asked, “Why are you in here? You read fine.” I looked at him and smiled. “Don’t say anything, please. I’d rather just come down here.”

The class was an hour long and it soon became a favorite, a welcome distraction from the regular classroom setting. In addition to being a fine reader, I had started writing stories the year before, when I was 8. Though I wrote constantly, typing on the Olivetti my godfather Uncle Hans had gifted me, I kept that side of myself a secret from my classmates.

Uncle Hans was a German-Jew who had fled his homeland during Hitler’s rein, lived on 81^st Street in the Excelsior Hotel. A nearsighted writer who’d once worked with Thomas Mann on a literary magazine, he started me on the road to ruin when he instructed me to dictate a story to him. Having seen the comical crime flick The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight that day, I stole elements for my tale, which Uncle Hans typed-up and handed to me. I can still recall the smell of typewriter ink, the smooth texture of the paper, and how the blocks of black text paragraphs looked on each page.

From that moment, I was hooked on telling stories (inspired by horror comics and The Twilight Zone) and writing poems. I sent a few to Motown Records in Hollywood, thinking they could be hit songs for the Jackson 5; they were sent back in an envelope with the word HA typed in red ink on the back. None of that literary ambition spilled over to my school work, which was simply average. “Michael is a bright boy, but he doesn’t apply himself,” became the mantra of my childhood.   

In sixth grade a few teachers rotated classes, with Mr. Waters coming in to teach history and Miss Barry to teach English. A tall, attractive woman in her late 20s, a few of the boys had a crush on her. She drank Tab and dressed fashionably--her clothes reminded me of the stylish illustrations on the Simplicity patterns in the window of the Singer store on 145^th Street. I don’t recall her class being creative or interactive; I’m sure we were just learning tenses, vowels, nouns, grammar, and other foundations of the language.

The following year, in the spring 1976, I revealed my writer side when attempting to launch a school newspaper. A big Elton John fan, I started the paper to write a review of the film Tommy, in which the bespectacled pop star portrayed the Pinball Wizard, a character that sung a tune by the same name. That piece was ground zero for the reams of cultural criticism in my textual future.

That winter I was shocked when I received an acceptance for a poem I’d sent to Space & Time, a science fiction fanzine. They’d also sent me a crisp $5.00 bill. Forty-eight years later I can still recall that heart stopping moment when I opened the S.A.S.E. (self-addressed stamped envelope), withdrew the acceptance letter, and saw Abe Lincoln’s glum face frowning on the dyed green paper.

The St. Catherine’ Gazette, or whatever it was called, contained other short articles written by me alongside illustrations swiped from CARtoons comics. Mom helped me put it together, typed it for me, and made fifty Xerox copies. Though the students were excited by the publication, the teachers were mostly indifferent. I sold each copy for a dime. Sister Regis demanded that I give her a free copy, and the principal Sister Mary Riley wanted to know, “What’s our cut?”

“Excuse me?”

“Well, if you sell the paper in school, you have to give the school a cut,” She said. That was when I realized the Church could operate like the mob. Even English teacher Miss Barry never offered a word of encouragement, and by the time she was my main teacher in 8^th grade, in the fall of ‘76, she had surely forgotten any writing abilities I displayed.

After the Bicentennial summer with its constant reminders of revolution, the signing of the Declaration of Independence, replica battleships sailing on the Hudson River, and a wild fireworks display, the hoopla was over and I was looking forward to graduating junior high in the spring of 1977. Because my birthday was in June, I was 13 when 8^th grade started and I’d be the same age when our degrees were passed out nine months later.

While it was barely discussed, we were all going through puberty and some students’ changes were more noticeable than others. My buddy Thomas Taveras started reading GQ and Erica Jong’s popular sex novel Fear of Flying. Previously smooth-faced boys were beginning to sprout lip hair, and few classmates were already interested in sex. Personally I’d developed a crush on a girl who’d transformed over the summer. But I was still a husky nerd, too afraid to rap to girls, so I never let her know.

It was around that time that I became close to my classmate Tony Cafiero, who was equally as nerdy. When mom and grandma weren’t home, he and I gathered in my living-room listening to The Beatles’ Greatest Hits albums—the late-era (1967-1970) blue one was my favorite. On other days we went to the Hamilton Grange Library on 145^th between Broadway and Amsterdam, which had been my sanctuary since I was six.

While Tony, a future Navy man, looked at books about ships and sailing, I cruised the aisles for collections of short stories and essays. I had started taking my writing “hobby” more seriously, buying Writer’s Digest, submitting fiction and poems to various markets, and sending fan letters to horror/fantasy scribe Nick Cuti (he wrote scripts for Creepy and Vampirella at Warren) asking him for advice. “Make sure you read more than comics,” he wrote back.

That winter I was shocked when I received an acceptance for a poem I’d sent to Space & Time, a science fiction fanzine. They’d also sent me a crisp $5.00 bill. Forty-eight years later I can still recall that heart stopping moment when I opened the S.A.S.E. (self-addressed stamped envelope), withdrew the acceptance letter, and saw Abe Lincoln’s glum face frowning on the dyed green paper.

That was the first cash I’d ever received for anything I’d written. The second time was a few months later, in the winter of 1977, when a few male classmates paid me a quarter each to write poems Miss Barry assigned us to do for homework. I can’t recall which poets we’d read in class, but was already familiar with Edgar Allan Poe and Langston Hughes, as well as books by Nikki Giovanni and Ntozake Shange I’d found on mom’s bookshelf.

However, two days after I turned in my poem, Miss Barry kept me after class. “I read your poem,” she said, “You copied it from a book.” It wasn’t a question, just an accusation.

“What?”

“You plagiarized that poem.”

“I did not.”

“I think you did,” she said. “I’ll have to fail you for the assignment.” Of course, in 1977 there was no software to determine if I had cheated, but her opinion was enough to both accuse and determine guilt. If this was a movie, there would be a close-up on my bewildered face frozen in disbelief. That moment that would stay with me for decades. Like a scar that might’ve faded years ago, I can still see a faint outline of the wound, and it instantly transports be back to that time, place and Miss Barry’s scolding face.

A few male classmates paid me a quarter each to write poems Miss Barry assigned us to do for homework. I can’t recall which poets we’d read in class, but was already familiar with Edgar Allan Poe and Langston Hughes, as well as books by Nikki Giovanni and Ntozake Shange I’d found on mom’s bookshelf…However, two days after I turned in my poem, Miss Barry kept me after class. “I read your poem,” she said, “You copied it from a book.”

After I was dismissed, I walked slowly out of the first floor classroom and strolled home in solitude. As an aspiring writer, that falsehood might’ve damaged me so seriously that I never wrote again, but thankfully it didn’t. Still, it did make me slightly poetry-phobic.  

I never told my mother about this, and neither did the teacher. Why, I have no idea. Mom would’ve defended me, shown Miss Barry my other poems, and told her about the one I’d sold for five bucks. For years I wondered whether it might have been a case of racism, that white Miss Barry found it inconceivable that a young Black boy could write such a good poem. Or maybe she just didn’t like me.

“And you said you had written poems for other boys in class,” my friend Scot La Roc offered decades later. “Maybe she had seen your style in those others and thought it looked familiar, but she just didn’t know why.” What he said sounded logical. But, if that was so, it was strange that I was the only person accused.

From David Henderson to Sonia Sanchez to Victor Hernández Cruz, I always cite various poets as influences on my own work. If I’m stuck writing an essay or short story, I will read though a chapbook by Latasha Natasha Diggs or Tongo Eisen-Martin. But, with the exception of a few poems I wrote for women back in the 1980s, I’ve had little desire to return to the form. While I might occasionally dip my toe in the water, I’ll never swim that river again.   

Years after that initial incident, I saw on the St. Catherine’s alumni page on Facebook that there was to be a school reunion. Though I didn’t attend there were pictures from the event posted, and I saw one of Miss Barry. I thought about what I might’ve said had I seen her, perhaps offering to send her links to my various writings that were as original as the poem I’d presented decades before.

No one wants to be called a plagiarist, least of all a petty Cancerian like me. It’s an insult I’ve held onto tightly since I was 13. I’ve cringed whenever I heard stories of plagiarism, especially when the alleged plagiarist has been a Black person, like Roots writer Alex Haley, or notorious New York Times reporter Jayson Blair. Maybe when I was in therapy in the ‘90s I should’ve brought it up at least once, instead of talking about my father so much. At least before dad died, I got a chance to talk to him about my issues, but in the case of Miss Barry, that opportunity never arose.

In 2022, I saw a Facebook notice that Miss Barry, at the age of 77, had passed away. Former students wrote about what a great teacher she was and how she had changed their lives. I wish I could’ve shared that joy, but I felt nothing. Once again a million thoughts rattled through my brain, things I might’ve done or said back in 1977, or at the St. Catherine’s reunion. Still, I doubt Miss Barry would’ve remembered me or even recalled her baseless accusation. What was one of the most miserable days of my life 47 years ago had been just another afternoon in her many years as a 8^th grade teacher.