The Balm of Anger

The following is part of my exploration of a topic that fascinates me--immigration. I am writing and reading alongside of my students as they also research a topic that has captured their fascination.


The lengths people go in order to become American, or live in a America, speaks volumes about how great we have it as well as how poorly others can have it across the globe.

The willingness to strip one's life of possessions and family heirlooms must be a shared experience among immigrants from many nations and many decades. However, to the immigrant in that moment, possessions must take on an immediate insignificance--after all, what value is there in a thing when compared to one's freedom?

In I Am an American by Jerry Stanley, the following quote takes the release of personal possessions to another level:

Stunned by the growing hostility, the Nisei tried to appear as un-Japanese as possible. Slowly, sadly, all along the west coast of America, they destroyed what they possessed of their Asian heritage. Japanese books and magazines were burned because of a rumor that FBI agents had found such materials in the homes of Issei arrested on suspicion of sabotage. Priceless diaries, letters, and photographs were burned; porcelain vases, tea sets, and silk tablecloths were buried or dumped on the street.

The Issei (pronounced EES-say) were born in Japan. The Nisei (pronounced KNEE-say), born in America to Issei parents, are American citizens. Stanley's narrative makes me wonder about a major difference between what my European ancestors experienced and what the Japanese-Americans were forced to endure. For the Japanese-Americans, the destruction of their possessions was an effort to make oneself "less"--to deny who you were, where you came from, to hide--to reject your blood--to scrub one's race and heritage from their skin.

This astounds me.

The effort to strip away a perception. The effort to throw away who you are. The effort to convince us that you are not what we fear you are. 

I am certain that some would respond that I should not be angry or embarrassed, but thankful. Nevertheless, I am left wondering what drives some of the decisions our leaders made in 1942, or the painful words they uttered.

For example, Lieutenant General John L. DeWitt incited the American public's fear, anger, and sense of loss when he roared, "A Jap's a Jap and it makes no difference if he is an American citizen." His words reek of the need to blame and the need to physically vent out our emotion.  Anger and hatred becomes a balm.

When people slam doors or throw objects out of emotion, they transfer their venom onto what they have in their hands at the time...or what they can control. When emotion and common sense are in conflict, emotion wins.

And anger can literally pull us out of our minds.

Today I think of my Italian-American uncles and aunts who served our country during WWII. I wonder how they felt about the internment of the Japanese-Americans--both in the moment, and long after the fact. Was there a double-standard in my family? Or did they empathize, fearful of facing a similar fate as American was not only at war with Japan, but with Germany and Italy as well.

Or did my ancestors understand, that our fear and anger only ran skin deep?

The Good Stuff

Awaiting my students at their seats today are 3-4 essays written by their peers. I paper clipped the essays to their name cards.

As an aside, I use name cards at desks to rearrange the room every day. Constantly mixing up the seating order creates a sense of community that I am comfortable with. And I find it important in a writing class. Students get to know other students more quickly by sitting with different people each day, and they also find out so much more about each other through various writing activities.

Each student reads the 3-4 essays at his/her desk and leaves at least one positive post-it comment on each essay. It takes 12-15 minutes for the more patient and thoughtful students, and it takes 8-10 for the students who tend to always be in a rush.

As a model, and a guide, I stress the use of the word admire. Create a comment that points out something you admire in the piece. Or, as Katherine Bomer suggests in Hidden Gems:

1. "Tell your partner, the writer, what his or her piece makes you think about, what it makes you feel, or what it reminds you of from your own life. In other words, what were you thinking while you read it?
2. Point to places where you think the writing is "good." A place that you admire--that you almost wish you had written yourself.

We use sticky notes to leave our comments. I encourage my students to leave their initials in the corner of the sticky note to ensure a sense of control on my part, as well as to foster another non-threatening connection between young people.

By the way, I also slip my essay into the mix for student feedback...which they like...and I love.

As we roll through all five classes, each student essay should be receiving five distinct positive comments from peers...four from classes and students they may never encounter. I find this simple and efficient activity helps build on the sense of respect we all like see if our kids. Also, the students look forward to the feedback on many levels:

1. it is fun for them to see who offered them feedback, since it is random
2. they truly enjoy having the time to read the work of their classmates--they grow into it
3. they get practice at learning how speak the language of writing and writers
4. the act of receiving praise and encouragement can not be measured

In order to set this activity up ahead of time, I had the students submit two copies of their most recent. I have an original copy which I will assess and provide separate feedback on, and of course I collect the second copy and set it aside for the next day.

When place the essays out at their desks I try to ensure a mix of class periods among each pile--so the kid who gets his pile during 2nd period class will only read one 2nd period essay at the most.

It takes some management and manipulation with absences, band lessons, and everything else pulling a student from our classes, but I adjust and slide an extra essay into some piles, while also sitting among the students myself and adding post-its on the essays without a home.

What Matters

Flip through a literature textbook. Pull a novel from a bookcase. Open the newspaper or a magazine.

The writing we'll find wasn't assigned or ground through the teeth of a rubric. The writing we'll find, in its current form, was discovered through the revision of ideas.

And through the freedom to write about what matters.

I would say all writers write to discover some truth through their own honesty, but that is not entirely true either. Yet honesty is the difference. And, honestly,  this much is true--we can only grow as a writer by writing about what matters to us--with honesty.

For example, I could assign "Write an essay about the very first friend that you remember." Or I could ask students to "Write about a major problem in our community." I could. And most, if not all, of my students could write something based on those prompts. However, none of them  might care about either of those topics. And if they do not care, then they can not grow as a writer. It is as simple as that.

They would go through the motions. Write something. And say little.

No rubric or writing prompt ever formed a better writer. Neither ever transformed anyone into a Welton Academy protege of Mr. John Keating.

 None.

A rubric is a rag to polish our gems. A rubric does not encourage writers, nor does it inspire writers. A rubric is a guide to being better editors of our work, which is indeed important. It matters.

But let us be honest. No rubric ever made someone a better writer. No Henry James. No T.S. Eliot. No Libba Bray. No Jay Asher. No writer was ever built on a rubric.

If we want to help foster better writing, then we must help students understand that the best writers are those who say something.

Teach our kids to say something with their words. (And how can they do that if we cuff them to a prompt that they do not care about?)

Yes, I am suggesting that we have a better chance at helping our students improve their writing by encouraging and modeling writing about topics that excite, anger, inspire, reveal, fascinate...we have a better chance at them having something to say if they have a chance to write about what matters to them.

Encourage them to write about what matters to them.

Yes, teach them the distinctions among informative, persuasive, and narrative writing. Yes, show them examples of those modes. Discuss them, share them, investigate them. Revisit these modes throughout the year. Yes, teach them.

Yes guide them and help them make connections to the literature you read. Yes, guide them, lead them, mentor them.

Then set them free.

Set them free to keep asking themselves, "why does this matter to me?" Teach them to write a draft, read it, highlight a line, a phrase, a word--the core of the piece--the part that matters most to them. Then take that line, place on a new sheet of paper--and write. Dig into it. Keep doing this until your writing surprises you...until the essay is trying to tell you something...until you learn something about yourself, or why planes fly, or why cats are afraid of water, or why you hate summer camp.

If you have written something that has not surprised you or revealed something or made you even more curious...then, we might as well just use prompts. Because we are not digging enough. We are not curious, or angry, or inspired. We are just passing time.

And why do that?

J.R.R. Tolkien liked writing about Hobbits and Ents.

David Brooks likes exploring topics as a NY Times Op-Ed columnist.

J.K. Rowling liked writing about Muggles and the Dark Arts.

Mark Bowden likes writing about current events, politics, crime, sports--he writes what makes him curious.

Emily Dickinson liked using poetry to help her examine ideas such as immortality, nature, and death.

Kurt Vonnegut liked writing satire. And we will find Vonnegut's voice in his work--we will find him writing about things that disgust him and things that fill him with awe.

And so I ask you--who writes about the things that do not care about?

The American student.

Why?

© CheyAnneSexton http://cheyannesexton.etsy.com

Give your students this gift--break free from the canned writing prompt and use the rubric for all that it is--a rag to polish the diamonds they can produce with time and pressure. If we would only give them the freedom and time to explore and dig, and dig, and dig deeper still...because a rag can polish a beat-up rusty Chevy too.

And it would still be a beat-up rusty Chevy that nobody is buying.