Korb has a master's degree in English literature and creative writing and has written for a wide variety of educational publishers. In the following essay, she discusses the different reactions of the children in "The Lesson."

According to Teri Ann Doerksen writing in The Dictionary of Literary Biography, Toni Cade Bambara's first short story collection, Gorilla, My Love, "celebrates urban African-American life, black English, and a spirit of hopefulness inspired by the Civil Rights movement." By 1972, when the collection was published, Bambara had already established herself as an advocate for African-American and women's rights, and many of her stories were a literary call to arms; Bambara saw in her writing the opportunity to initiate resistance to the cultural—and racist—norms of her day. Toni Morrison wrote of Bambara in Deep Sightings and Rescue Missions: Fiction, Essays, and Conversations

There was no doubt whatsoever that...