DEI and the Teaching of American Literature

For the record, as a lit/comp teacher, I integrate writing from all racial/cultural lines possible within a given unit. For example, for the founding documents section, we not only look at the Declaration, Constitution, and Bill of Rights, we also read selections from Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl so students can see how the US failed to actually implement life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness promises to those who weren't white, male, or land owners. 

In our unit on the Individual and Society, we examine writing from Booker T. Washington, Emily Dickenson, T.S. Eliot, and Walt Whitman, along with an extended study of American Born Chinese (the graphic novel). 

In our unit on Power, Protest, and Change, we look at the literature that confronted inequity and led to changing status and rights for women, workers, and African-Americans. This includes works by Frederick Douglas, Sojourner Truth, Abraham Lincoln, Langston Hughes, Upton Sinclair, and an extended study of Kate Chopin's The Awakening.

In our unit on the importance of setting, I give my students a choice of Gatsby, Their Eyes Were Watching God, or Huck Finn (with parental approval), along with a few short selections including Judith Ortiz Cofer. 

In our unit on what America fears, in addition to The Crucible (and studying the Red Scare and McCarthyism alongside it), we also cover "The Masque of the Red Death" and how even in Poe's day, the rich set themselves aside in a place of safety, leaving the rest of society to suffer. 

In our final unit, we study and write short stories, including those from Alice Walker, Hemingway, Poe, Louise Erdich, Bierce, and Raymond Carver. 

Finally, the students are allowed to read a book of their choice, as long as it is written by an American author, and relate how the ideals and characteristics of American society and history are reflected in it (fights for freedom, equality, liberty, etc.)

Even with all this integration, I still feel it's important to set aside time as a nation to celebrate those who have been historically forgotten, abused, or even are currently being maligned. 

American literature and American history is the story of a baby country being born and still growing. Hopefully, we can realize that we aren't an adult country yet, but still a growing adolescent and learn that we are still trying to become a land of the free, where all people are created equal and have equal access (not just equal freedom) to the unalienable rights promised on our birth certificate.

And this is why I believe I've finally found myself as a Literature teacher and as a citizen.

Poetry Corner: Punk Rock

 

They busted the windows on Wall Street today
Trash cans filled with garbage and old food made the first crack
And sent all the happy people in nice suits scurrying
For once thinking about something other than the numbers
That make them better at ignoring the rest of us.
They stepped over the banana peels and potato chip bags
The crushed soda cans that should have been recycled instead 
On their way to the exits, the only light they were
Suddenly focused on—But that kind of thing isn’t really my style. 

They’ll gather up a million men and women tomorrow
And put them in matching T-shirts that say “Not Going Back”
With rapidly practiced chants, call-backs to great leaders
Of yesterdays gone by, times we thought we had moved beyond
Times we assumed we had put behind us. I can join them
Of course I can. It’s the least—the very least, if I’m honest—
I can do, right behind merely sending money on my phone
While I stream Agatha All Along on Disney Plus. But
It still doesn’t quite feel like the thing I was created to do at this time.

They dyed their mohawks in rainbows and shoved the middle finger
Into the air while their fans screamed and moshed and bled
Showing camaraderie, empathy, solidarity the only way
They understood fully, with anger, with energy, with activity. 
And it felt amazing to jump, and yell,  and raise my fist, and shout obscenities 
At the powers, and yet… Even when they kissed—tongues and leather 
And lace and fingers and hair—Man on man, woman on woman, 
Man on woman, trans on trans, Trans on straight
Straight on till sunrise… It still was not enough. 

Yesterday I am a writer. Tomorrow I paint in words. Today
I have words or many colors, many spectrums that correspond 
To those that swirl in the sky, dance in the puddles, blur through smoke
“Vandalize” city walls with slogans: Trans rights are human rights.
Abortion is healthcare. Gay and proud. Black lives matter.
I have all these, and my keyboard has been selfish, complacent,
Too satisfied in my place of safety. But no more. 
I cannot break windows. My knees may give out on a march. 
My money can only go so far. My shouting can be drowned out by other music. 

But I can write. And by God, I will. We are not going back. 

(c) 2024 Sean Taylor

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Poetry Corner: When We Had No Flag

 

by Sean Taylor

When we had no flag 

There were only white sheets, hanging on clotheslines 

Flapping on windy days, 

Waving greetings like so many neighbors on so many dusty paths

White not for surrender 

But for sleeping, for rest because white was easy 

Easy to bleach our odors away, 

Dirt and sweat from one person's work, one man's labor, one woman's toil

One day we  painted bars deep red

Crimson with the blood of the people who lived here first 

But there wasn't enough

So we added more from the backs of the people we owned

And so we painted what was left blue

Blue with the bruises of our slaves and red with their stripes 

Even if we had to wrench the paint out of the whips after use, 

Twisting leather until our fingers too were as calloused as theirs

We found some white remained

But it was not for sleeping, not anymore; it was for the Virgin Innocent

Our children who would inherit a world 

Built on the paint dripped from the wounds of those we had  conquered

Perhaps it's time again

Wash day for the flag, with fresh bleach to clean away the red and blue

To allow the colors to surrender and fade

And once more flap greetings in the wind

Perhaps you, or me, 

or that woman over there, the one in all the colors of the rainbow

Or that vermin, that enemy, that animal,

Could be the bleach to get the job started

To speak the change we all should hear

Whistling in the wind

That blew when we had no flag

(c) 2024

Visit my poetry.com site.