My Adventure Continues

So... My students read One Crazy Summer for today and made all these nice activity plans that we did. Which was nice. But I really felt like almost every group sidestepped the issue of race, which are really central to this book. Can we look at Delphine without seeing the color of her skin, knowing how much this small fact has affected her life? I think I made the mistake of thinking that they would feel comfortable talking about these things because they voted for the book knowing what it was about. I have tried to set an example of pushing myself to talk about these uncomfortable issues and acknowledging that it is uncomfortable and that I don't have to know all the answers, but instead be willing to participate in open discussion. I could have encouraged more discussion of race by giving them examples of activities that created safe ways to explore these difficult areas.

The Conclusion

I feel written out. Drained. Wordless. And still I keep writing. How do you tell when you’re done with something that doesn’t end? While I hit many of the resources from class that I wanted to, I didn’t get to all of them or as deeply as I wanted to but I do think that I need to wrap this up, however, temporarily as this state may be. There are still many discussions to be had and thoughts to think. In a few words, I am impressed with the depth of the book’s issues but felt that the ending somehow cheapened it, made it less satisfying somehow. I think that it is an excellent choice for teaching, both in my class and in the classes of my students because of the issues that can be explored through this text. There are almost too many so that I would hope that they wouldn’t lose the very important aspect of race in favour of something “easier” like poetry or mothers that could be separated out in order to safe-ify teaching. Perhaps that’s the biggest lesson from this book and for my proposed teaching- Blackness is central to this book- don’t overlook it as we often overlook our own privilege and the inequities of our social system. When you don’t look at race, you deny something that is very important to many people, including those we meet in this book.
How has my experience as a reader changed? I’ve questioned more, I’ve thought more about it, I’ve realized the importance of not discounting race and experiences of Blackness, I know some words to talk about these things and some theories theories to relate issues of multiculturalities to. But I think have a lot of thinking to do and, even better, talking about this book to share my experiences and the gain from listening to theirs. I think my perspective is starting to shift to better ways of thinking that can help me work toward an equitable, multicultural reality in my classroom and maybe in the world.
How would I teach this book differently? And I could really write an essay on each one except that I feel like I’m repeating myself instead of travelling someplace new. Regardless, I do look at the issues differently, talk about them differently, and consider my words differently. But there is always more to learn and more to think and to be able to grow I have to admit that and work toward it.
And on a truly final(ish) note, I think this format really works to wildly explore ideas without having to structure them- alternative format seem better for exploration rather than recitation of knowledge. This is all Maxine Greene stuff, which works really well both for the book and discussing how the Dialectic of Freedom plays out through the major issues it addresses and how this project has gone. Releasing the Imagination is definitely on my to read list- maybe this summer. In any case, putting thoughts into words is still structuring, journaling like this is just maybe a less artificial structure?

p204-215 Be Eleven & Afua

This chapter/ending was better than the wrap up before. Believable and not fully resolved. I think this would be a difficult book for a child to understand why Cecile would not want her children, maybe more difficult than the racial issues because it connects to them personally. Maybe that’s why race is so difficult to deal with. Unless you have a non-dominant ethnicity, you don’t learn about your ethnicity so you don’t see that you have it and so can something that you don’t have be valuable? Colour blindness also seems to suggest that if we just get rid of ethnicity everything will be fine but that doesn’t say anything about privilege and power and the little racisms encountered every day.
On a side note, the acknowledgments are insufficient as an author’s note to give more information about the story. This book really needs a teacher and a good teacher to get at all the meaty stuff about power and race and color and freedom.

p185-199 Glorious Hill & The Third Thing

Well that was unexpected. Not completely unexpected, but I didn’t expect that to be how a major tension point got resolved. Fern’s public declaimation of Crazy Kelvin for telling the police about the Black Panthers was well, I suppose narratively appropriate, I just think that at this point the story hasn’t really set up his motivations for doing that. He seemed to not only be not very nice but also very pro-Black. Why should the character who challenges the characters about what they call themselves and the color of a babydoll be a bad guy? It’s good to see these characters challenged and challenge is uncomfortable but doesn’t have to be a bad thing. I guess this little turn of events is just rubbing me a little the wrong way because it seems to undercut the story.

p200-203 So

I have loved the story so far, but I’m not I’m not feeling the wrap up- it’s going too quickly and too neatly and maybe too optimistically? I felt that Vonetta’s insertions into Cecile’s poem, I Birthed a Nation really messed with the poem as a poem- not so cool. Almost like defacing someone else’s artwork, or appropriating someone else’s words. And it’s not all that optimistic as Delphine didn’t get her compliment from Cecile, who just happens to show up at the rally. Things do have to get tied up but I’m not overly impressed at the moment.