“You see, Mr. Asagai, I am looking for my identity!”

Last year, after reading A Raisin in the Sun, my students chose a social issue from the play (e.g. segregation, expectations based on gender, dream jobs vs. real jobs), thought about how the issue applied to their own lives, interviewed people in their communities, and created podcasts in which they analyzed the interviews. It was an OK project—especially given that it was new and there were a billion tech problems with GarageBand—but I found that some students wanted to generalize the experiences of their interviewees to represent an entire group. In one particularly problematic example, three white students wanted to write about de facto racial segregation in New York neighborhoods. When I suggested they examine their own predominantly white neighborhoods, they resisted.

I’ve been thinking ever since about how I can design a project that will get students to connect themselves—their own identities, their own conflicts—to the play. I keep returning to what Lorraine Hansberry said in To Be Young, Gifted, and Black, in response to drama critics arguing over whether it was a play about a black family or a family: “I hadn’t noticed the contradiction because I’d always been under the impression that Negroes are people” (128). It is a universal play, in that all of us have families and all of us have a race. It is not a universal play, in that we come from a diverse array of families and races, and our experiences of family and race differ. It’s both/and. And I want my students to get that their own experiences are like that too: both universal and highly context-specific.

So this year, instead of having them find social issues the play raises, I’d like to have students track conflicts in A Raisin in the Sun. That should be easy. There’s not one relationship in the play that isn’t riddled with conflict, and many basic relationship types are represented: mother/son, mother/daughter, husband/wife, brother/sister, mother-in-law/daughter-in-law, sister-in-law/sister-in-law, boyfriend/girlfriend, father/son, neighbor/neighbor. Each character is also in conflict with himself or herself: Mama over how to spend the money; Walter over whether to occupy the new house; Beneatha over which boyfriend she likes more; Ruth over whether to keep her baby.

I think it’ll be easier for students to relate to conflicts in the play than to see how a “social issue” pertains to them. Even calling it a “social issue” makes it about “society” and not them in particular. But being a brother or sister, son or daughter, grandchild, friend, student, or work partner is something all of them can consider on a personal level. They might, for example, relate to Travis asking his mother for 50 cents, her saying no, and his feeling disappointed. (They might also relate to the fact that Travis’s father then gives him the 50 cents, much to his mother’s chagrin.) Or they might relate to Beneatha and her family having different ideas about how a she should spend her time. Or, they might relate to Walter’s entrusting his money with his “friend” and losing it all. After reading the play and examining some of these conflicts, students will choose one they can relate to and examine how that conflict plays out in their own lives.

But in A Raisin in the Sun, Lorraine Hansberry goes further, making identities and roles central to the conflicts. Identity: Walter is working-class, black, male. Role: He is a father, brother, son, and husband. The conflicts Walter confronts—most notably, whether to take Lindner’s offer and restore the family’s financial security that he destroyed, or maintain his family’s dignity by moving into the new house and facing the racist neighbors—are inextricably bound up in his roles (father, husband, brother, son) and identities (black, male, working-class, Christian). Beneatha, Ruth, Mama, and Travis also find themselves in various conflicts that either flow from their roles and identities, or handle their conflicts in light of those roles and identities, or both.

Are seventh graders, many of whom haven’t quite made the leap to abstract thinking, and many of whom are beginning to question identities and try on new roles, ready to examine how race, class, gender, sexual orientation, religion, or ethnicity plays into their own conflicts? It might be too easy for a 13-year-old to oversimplify causation (“It’s all because…”) or resist the concept (“It has nothing to do with…”). Still, I want to teach to the kids who are ready to think about the conflicts in their lives this way—and push those who aren’t. I’m wondering how I should go about doing that.

Prizing the Literature Essay

Should seventh graders write essays analyzing Steinbeck’s techniques or what’s wrong with Holden? I’m of two minds on this one. In one mind, I believe literary analysis to be a great way for kids to sharpen their ability to make an argument and support it with specific evidence. As Carol Jago, president of the NCTE, explained eloquently in a recent article, reading fiction allows kids to empathize with characters who are very different from themselves and to think about ethical dilemmas that they might encounter as they build their own lives. Writing about fiction allows them to dig deeper into the text, make meaning, and create a logical argument based on the meaning they see.

In the other mind, I keep thinking about authentic purposes for writing. Better writing usually comes from a more authentic purpose—so says pretty much every writing book I’ve read, and I also know it from experience. The seventh grade essays are pretty consistently painful. But, if I’m writing an email to complaining parents, I’m going to write a beautifully-crafted argument for why their child is actually doing fine despite the B- besmirching her record. The email will probably be better written than the briefs I wrote for law school. You don’t get much more authentic a writing purpose or well-defined an audience than those emails warding off evil parents. And I hope that’s not the best writing I do, but for certain it’s good writing—better than if someone gave me a prompt to write a pretend email.

That’s what some of our assignments are, right? “Pretend you’re writing this op-ed for a newspaper.” Or, “Pretend you’re writing this podcast for NPR.” For most others, we don’t even pretend there’s an audience: “Write a paragraph explaining a symbol in The House on Mango Street. Be sure to use at least two well-blended quotations.” Only occasionally do we give them real reasons to write: “Write an email to your congressional representative arguing for a more aggressive stance on an issue that matters to you. Remember to cc me on the email.” I’ve got to wonder, though—are those emails really going to be better written than the symbolism paragraphs just because the emails have an authentic purpose and audience? I suspect not, but I couldn’t put my finger on precisely why.

Yesterday, one of my colleagues made an interesting point about authentic writing. It’s not so much about purpose and audience—though these matter—as it is about the writer’s investment in the writing. Nell knows her vignette collection isn’t getting picked up by Random House, but she cares about what she’s writing because they’re about her life and the topics matter to her. She’s invested. And the writing is brilliant. Scout, Kate, and Sara know their podcast won’t air on NPR, but they care about the issue they’ve chosen—whether people act more like themselves with their families or their friends—so they’re invested. And the reason my email to those obnoxious parents is so brilliant isn’t that I have an authentic purpose and an authentic audience; it’s that I care about the writing. The writing matters to me. If we want students to write well, we have to get them to care about the writing: its purpose, its content, its effect.

Very often, the reason writing matters to the writer relates to how it will affect others. I want that parent email to have the effect of convincing those complainers that their child is learning and they need to get out of her way. I used to say to my classes that all writing is persuasive; authors are trying to convince us that their message is true or right. So sure, the purpose and effect of the writing make the writing matter. But the content can also make it matter. I’m writing this blog not because I want to convince anyone that I’m right, but because I care about what happens in my English classroom and I want to reflect upon my practices. I write books both because I hope others will read them, eventually, and because I care about the characters and their stories.

So I guess the way to resolve the literature essay problem is to make sure my students are invested, both in the text itself and in the thesis of the essay. Now that they’re finished with their Steinbeck books and the time has come to write their essays on “What makes Steinbeck Steinbeck,” I’m asking them to look through their notes for topics, themes, and techniques that they want to explore further. When many of them chose topics we’ve discussed to death in class, I urged them to think about who they are and what aspect of Steinbeck’s writing they connect to. “Look in your notes for items you wish we’d had more time to discuss,” I urged them. “Don’t pick foreshadowing or the power theme just because we talked about it in class. Find something that matters to you. Like, if you really care about nature, maybe you want to write about how Steinbeck portrays the natural world and the human relationship to it. Or if you’ve been in a conflict with a friend, maybe you want to explore the conflicts between friends in Steinbeck books. Find something that matters to you.”

It doesn’t feel quite as real as when I asked them to write vignettes on episodes from their own lives. With that project, it was easier for them to connect the assignment to what matters to them. But then again, and contrary to what they might think with their 13-year-old brains, the world isn’t just about them. Maybe, if we’re all lucky, they’ll choose topics they care about and learn something about how the world beyond themselves works. And maybe I will actually like reading them. Here’s hoping.

Questioning Assumptions with Steinbeck

My Steinbeck author study continues. In today’s lesson, the students examined the theme of appearances vs. reality and had a chance to think about assumptions and labels in the three books and in their lives.

First, the students folded a sheet of paper and into four sections and wrote the names of four characters, depending on which book they’re reading. Students reading Of Mice and Men used Lennie, George, Curley, and Curley’s wife. Those reading The Red Pony used Jody, Carl Tiflin, Billy Buck, and Gitano. For Cannery Row, they wrote Doc, Dora, Mack, and Lee Chong. In the boxes, students listed things people might assume about each character without knowing him or her well. I asked, “How might people label or judge this character?” I urged the students to consider appearance, job, living situation, interactions with other characters, and other behaviors.

Perhaps because they’re in a middle school minefield of assumptions and judgments, the groups had no trouble coming up with labels. Some felt uncomfortable and asked if it was OK to label Lennie as retarded or Curley’s wife as a slut. I reminded them that the purpose of the activity was to dig deeper into the theme of appearances but that they were right to feel uncomfortable about using offensive terms. I wish they’d picked up on the race prejudices in how characters view Lee Chong in Cannery Row and Gitano in The Red Pony. We’ll definitely be coming back to that when we talk about forms of power in Steinbeck’s books.

After about 10 minutes of students identifying labels and assumptions, I asked, “Which of the assumptions you listed about your character are true? False? Unknown?” They marked each item T for True, F for False, or U for Unknown based on textual evidence. Interestingly, many of the assumptions they identified turned out to be false or unknown; for example, there isn’t one shred of textual evidence that Curley’s wife actually sleeps around. Careful reading will reveal that far from being greedy, Lee Chong is very generous and cuts off credit only when it becomes necessary. Neither Mack, who is homeless and unemployed, nor Lennie, who is disabled, is stupid. Then again, some assumptions turn out to be true: Doc really is smart and kind, and Curley’s wife does in fact cause trouble.

Next, I asked groups to consider which of these characters they actually like. On the board, I circled these characters’ names. Then I went back to the labels. I said, “If these are the characters Steinbeck wants us to like—a mentally disabled guy, a simple farm boy, a homeless and unemployed man—what is Steinbeck trying to tell us about appearances and assumptions?” Students wrote their answers in paragraph form, and I asked them to share insights. Lots of kids said variations on, “Don’t judge a book by its cover.” Others said that if we can like people who are different from the way we are, maybe we shouldn’t judge them on those outer characteristics. One student said something like, “We like the characters who we know the most about. But maybe if we knew more about Curley, like why he feels the need to be so insecure and hate people, maybe we’d like him too.”

I found that last point particularly compelling, that we can empathize with others and like them more when we know their stories. (It will be interesting to see whether, after hearing more of Curley’s wife’s story, the students reading Of Mice and Men begin to like her more.) I’d like to ask students to think about their own stories that they reveal, conceal, repeat, revise, remember, and forget. A friend of mine pointed out that stories are social currency: which stories we tell, who we tell them to, and how we tell them plays a large part in how our images are constructed. Elections are won and lost because of stories. Defendants are convicted or acquitted based on how their stories are told. Romances and business deals are built and destroyed with stories. And, as my student pointed out today, we can reach out across the wide valleys that separate us from each other with our stories. When we tell stories, we give others a chance to ask questions instead of making assumptions, to understand instead of judge. I believe Steinbeck wrote his books at least in part so he could tell stories that weren’t being told, so readers would label a little less and relate a little more.

I closed the class by asking the students to close their eyes and picture a student in the middle school that they don’t really know and don’t really like. I asked, “What assumptions are you making about this person? How are you labeling him or her? How are you judging? Maybe if you knew more of this person’s story, you’d like the person better. Just something to think about.”