Reading the World: 1. Nigeria

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In an effort to help students grow as readers, we conference one-on-one about their choices. How they find books. What they like, don't like, want to try next. So much of the reading in my classroom is driven by choice.

Some conversations drift towards goal-setting. Specifically, we discuss reading books by authors from different parts of the world or books based on characters from diverse cultures. We discussed noticing authors: where they were from, what was unique about their life experience, and what details made it into the authors' bios.

It was a new way for some of my students to find books. And some found it an interesting challenge.

Swallowing my own advice, I decided I wanted to read Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. It would be--as far as I knew--my first novel by a writer from Nigeria. It arrived and took a space in my book pile beneath my standard, comfortable fare of nonfiction and contemporary fiction: Napolean: A Life by Andrew Roberts, H is for Hawk by Helen MacDonald, All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr, et al. I have enjoyed the 12 books I have read since early June.

And then I started Americanah. For the first 75 pages I felt uncomfortable. At arm's length. Painfully aware of my inability to connect with the characters or the experiences of an African getting one's hair braided in America, I felt impulses to abandon the book.

I stuck with it because the discomfort of not knowing is ultimately what I want to coach my students to overcome. Exposure to fragments of the world--even if it is through a novel--is desirable.

As Americanah developed, I found my reading gaining momentum. In the back of my mind I forgave my lack of comfort and just let the story take me with it.

By the time I reached the last 100 or so pages I took breaks to browse for my next uncomfortable book--the next book to stick a finger in my chest--the next book to challenge me to look out and abroad. To pay better attention.

I found Ann Morgan's blog, A Year of Reading the World where I was introduced to a word which described my reading habits: anglocentric. Ann Morgan wrote this about herself and I connect with her. I can admit this about myself and seek to change it.

Ann challenged herself to read at least one book by an author from all 196 countries. On her blog she lists all of the books she read by country. And so, now, I will start to work my way through the As and order my first few selections to start blending into my book pile.

Multicultural literature goes largely untouched in my classroom even though I have several dozen selections of diverse books on a clearly identified shelf.

And even though my students have written about their own cultural backgrounds and family histories, and I have book-talked multicultural titles, man of my students's reading lives also look anglocentric.

The challenge is bigger than me, but clearly, the challenge starts with me. I need to be a better model.

I am wondering how multicultural or diverse books do in other classroom libraries? And I am wondering what people discover about the reading choices of their own students or children? Do we contribute to the anglocentric reading model? Is it avoidable? And, if I can ask just for the sake of conversation, is the problem I am alluding that it may be?

YA Book Review: Shooting Kabul

Shooting Kabul by N.H. Senzai
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

After reading multicultural titles Bamboo People, by Mitali Perkins; The Red Umbrella by Christina Gonzalez; and Inside Out and Back Again, by Thanhha Lai, I started to become critical of the books I made available to my students. I took stock of my classroom library--several hundred titles--it was lacking in variety. Where were the multicultural books? Where were the books that appeal to boy readers? Where were the books that could challenge my best readers? For each category I could think of, I wasn't happy with had. What I had was a mostly inherited collection of books, passed along by two retired teachers. I hadn't taken care of the collection by growing it, and retiring the titles that had seen better days.

What had I been exposing them to that had any contemporary value or resonance in their own lives?  Sure the yellowed and tattered Newberry winners from twenty years ago still ring true, great writing is great writing, but what about the literature being produced now? 

For the past two years I've been on a reading blitz of sorts. As best I can I pick up YA titles and have found that YA multicultural literature is out there. It just wasn't in my classroom. So, in addition to titles I mentioned above, I discovered A Million Shades of Gray by Cynthia Kadohata; Finding Family by Tanya Bolden, and Heart of a Samuri, by Margi Preus.

I read A Step from Heaven by An Na; The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie; and One Crazy Summer by Rita-Williams Garcia.

I read All the Broken Pieces by Ann E. Burg; Someone to Run With by David Grossman; and Leaving Gee's Bend by Irene Latham.

Now I've read Shooting Kabul, by N.H. Senzai. And I will be thrilled to include it in my classroom library and offer it as a book talk at the very least.

Fair or not, I am beginning to build up a expectations as I pick up contemporary YA literature. Each sub-genre carries unique expectations. Through the multicultural lens, I'm hoping my students would pick it up and be exposed to something they may not encounter in their everyday lives.

Shooting Kabul is built on the days around 9/11. Those of us who lived it (and taught through it) weren't just exposed to hatred, but immersed in it...from all directions.

Interestingly, the author notes at the end of the book that she did not want to write this book because of the sensitivity of the topic. The wounds still have not healed. How could they? Equally as interesting, my 8th graders this past year knew very little about 9/11.

(Where has the time gone?)

Oh, they knew "of" it, sure. But what was missing that had a real presence other years--an emotional knowledge and connection. The emotional knowledge of living it or gleaning bits and pieces through their family. Through the passage of time, it appears that 9/11 is beginning to take on the patina of an encyclopedia entry.

Shooting Kabul has us watch as families escape an Afghanistan growing more oppressive beneath the Taliban. Based on some of her husband's family history and escape from Afghanistan, Senzai offers many details (and opportunities for questions and classroom discussion) that my students would not likely encounter.

The family's new life in America is shattered by the events on 9/11. Living in an community called "Little Kabul" we see, from a unique perspective the fears and pressures on anyone not white. Even a Mexican is called a terrorist by an adolescent.

One note, "Shooting" in title is a reference to a camera, and not violence.

Senzai offers a comprehensive glossary of terms familiar to her culture, and unfamiliar to my traditional classroom composition.

The book reads very easily, but you wouldn't be coming to this book for its complexity of style, but for the richness of what the topic offers. I can't help but offer another photography term: exposure. Put this book on your classroom library shelf simply for the exposure it affords into a world unfamiliar to our eyes other than through the images depicted on the news--accompanied with so many explosions and so much death.

Shooting Kabul is about perseverance, love, and tolerance. I anticipate many kinds wanting to talk about what they confronted in this novel.

I highly recommend it.

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Multicultural Lit. Review: Someone to Run With

Someone to Run With by David Grossman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Insert the sound of a long exasperated disappoint groan.

It pains me when I read a brilliant book and yet cannot directly share it with my students because of some of its content and pockets of harsh language...a character calls the boys "f-able" [the inserted dash is mine[ among many other gristly uses of that most colorful of "f" words.

However, starting at the beginning I had so much hope...

The opening device, a stray dog, Dinka, leading sixteen year-old Assaf on a journey to find the dog's owner, Tamar, yanks the reader right into a plot where bits and pieces are revealed by the hands of a craftsman. Israeli author David Grossman's opening is brilliant. Racing and yapping, Dinka tugs Assaf into a pizza shop...where pizzas are waiting for the dog's owner. Then Dinka gallops through the streets to the home of a nun...and on and on as it picks up scents and traces of memories of places and people she has seen before.

All along, we gather pieces of the ever-unfolding puzzle...who is the owner, where is she, why is the dog out on its own, and so on. The "where is she" question lies at the heart of the story.

It really is a thrilling ride through the streets of modern day Jerusalem--and then 1/4 of the way into the novel we discover what happened to Tamar. She ran away from home to become a street performer so that the local seedy corps of the mafia scoops her up and delivers her to her runaway brother. A junkie hooked on heroine. She doesn't want to run away from home, but she goes undercover in a sense to rescue someone she loves.

The parallel journeys are equally exciting and shifty--little is easily anticipated by the reader. But everything in each plot arc unravels in our hands and comes together in one pleasantly tangled and knotty story.

So much is right about this story; however, the authentic language is bit too gritty for the average middle school student. On the one hand, I see this as more appropriate for a high school aged student or, at best, a really mature middle school student in a really progressive family. On the other hand, the language is no more gritty than something you'd find in a John Hughes film...it is just that we also do not hand John Hughes scripts to our students either.

The other layer, the young characters hooked on drugs, performing on the street to line the pockets of the local mafia may also be too healthy of a dose of dark reality for your middle school community.

It disappoints me because there is so much here that young writers could learn from--I heartily recommend the novel for any adult to read, especially if you would like an introduction to more multicultural authors.

I see Grossman has written several books for young people--I'll have to check those out, as Someone to Run with, even for all of its brilliance (rich in culture and style) maybe be just a little too mature for a young adolescent audience.

Nevertheless, I guess all I can say is pick it up if you are old enough to drive.


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Wordsalve: poet Sunita Jain & my class

My most recent classroom Skype with an author emerged from a parent email.  A mother asked me if her daughter had ever mentioned her grandmother, a writer who lives in India.  The implication in the email was that this may be someone I would like to invite into my classroom through Skype, as I have with many authors over the past two years.

You never know when some of the best experiences in life will come, or how they will emerge.

Be Mine

I am afraid to touch

the hurts you have known, child

the sobs under the skin

the terror forged in your lines.

Will poems make up for these?

I'll make poems while the mind keeps.

And send you wordsalve for manbite.

Be well.  Be mine.

I asked if the family had anything I could read by the grandmother or photocopy to share with my classes.  The granddaughter brought me in a stack of books--when I say a stack I mean a stack.  The grandmother's writing and life experience is humbling and moving.

I Want You to Say

I want you to say
you love me
as leaves grow
on clinging vines--
say it again and again till
feeling is a net of veins
flowing with life.

Till music, hard and clean
like river water on stones,
courses through my soul-chime.

Having Indian poet Sunita Jain speak to my class was, without a doubt, one of my best experiences as a teacher:

a) The Indian students (particularly the females) had a chance to connect with a female Indian author--just last year the significance of these types of experiences were illuminated before me as an Indian female student in my class expressed heartfelt joy that I had Mitali Perkins speak to my class.  I can distinctly recall her saying that she could not believe she got to speak to real Indian author.  I'm learning first hand that mentor connections in general carry great formative influence of young people, yet to be able to zero in on specific cultures or the social features of your students is equally as relevant.

In Losing

In Losing I lost not you.

The self

migrated from self.

The music ceased.

The anguish

charred the rest.

b) A grandmother not only got to see her granddaughter in school, but also engaged with her in my classroom--imagine all of the parties, dinners, soccer games that this grandmother misses by living in New Delhi while her family lives her on the east coast of America.  She misses seeing her grandchildren grow because of the great distance between them.  Yet, a technology like Skype allows families and friends connect around the world.  I have to say that watching my student and her grandmother interact, and especially the repeated smile on the grandmother, has been one of my great honors as a teacher.  It was fulfilling to see my student so involved with the overall experience in addition to the privilege of seeing her interacting with her grandmother--not to mention the fact that all of my other students got to participate in this experience.  There were so many levels to it that I am still processing it.

Deserts are Space

Deserts are space

and ache is time,

when to part lovers

an ocean walks in.

c) Good writing is international, ageless, boundless, and timeless.  The personal nature of Sunita Jain's writing really comes through in her responses.  If you view the 20 minute video below, you'll hear her talk about the observations that came alive for her when her mother old and dying.  Her deeply personal and reflective response of how her own sensibilities and sensitives were altered in those moments served as such a touching and poignant lesson for my young writers.

Dawn

The dawn's silver grey

with sparrows, crows, bird in transit--

sunshot suddenly

with crimson blended.

d) In reading her poetry together before the Skype session, and then hearing her responses to our class, felt like I was hearing greatness.  It was great.  These were not only great moments for all of the beauty and sincerity mentioned above, but these were great words coming out of her.  I was really moved by the entire experience and I hope you gain something out of my sharing as much as I can here online.
 

YA Book Review: A Step from Heaven

I found An Na's A Step from Heaven while revising curriculum for the Common Core with colleagues.  We're pouring through the new text and materials and this novel about a Korean family's acculturation into American life catches my eye--after doing a little research through the stellar reviews online I thought maybe this is something to build into the curriculum?

A relatively short read at a 160 pages, the writing gripped me immediately.  Told from the first-person perspective of the daughter, Young-Ju, the novel begins when Young-Ju is a toddler and on the beach with a parent.  The writing (the thinking of the narrator) is in the language of a Korean toddler--as a reader I had to work a bit to keep up as there are Korean names and references to grandfather or father that I had to learn, and the images, attention span, and curiosity of Young-Ju as a toddler also keeps you focused.

Cleverly, Na alters the writing style and level as Young-Ju ages.

As a reader, you settle in to a rhythmic writing style at the same time you come to like and respect Young-Ju...and sour on her father.

Which brings up a very important consideration for this book--do you hand it to a student or do you just keep it on your shelf and if they self-select it, great...or do you keep it off your classroom shelf?  I raise the point because one of the central themes in the novel is abuse.  In addition to the father's (Apa) alcohol abuse, he beats the hell out of his wife and both children.  Bruised, battered, and at one moment perhaps fighting one's life, Apa's wife and two kids stay together with him as a family.

We witness Apa lose control not only of his temper and hands, but also his jobs and family--he physically leaves his wife for another women...in front of the children.

Yet through it all, Young-Ju's mother (Uhmma) still stands by her husband.  He is her husband and she is his wife--and that's it.

Just when I am ready not only to turn the page on Apa, and perhaps find him myself and shake sense into him, Uhmma shows her children pictures from better times.  One picture is of a young man, smiling, laughing, and holding a baby down the incoming tide of the ocean.  Uhmma points out that that is Young-Ju and her father...the strong memory that Young-Ju has of that moment has always contained her grandfather as the man holding joyously her in the waves--but she was wrong, it was her father.

Somehow, Na manages to soften the reader's perspective on Apa--somehow I pity him, somehow I want him to get help and be back with his family.

I don't know how Na did, but it was a beautiful and artful twist to the conclusion of the novel.

Highly recommended for any adult--I'll leave it up to you and the circumstances of your community to decide whether or not to keep this on your classroom bookshelf.  Honestly, it is tastefully done--and the moments of spousal and child abuse are brief but sharp--but I do think it warrants a healthy discussion to determine how you would offer this as an option to your students, and at what age--definitely high school appropriate, and I am inclined to say it is 8th grade appropriate, but I do think it is right on that edge.

Minjae Lee - Artist