Accessing Diverse Literature--Native Voices and Stories
Help me give my students novels that will expand the diversity of our selections ---from powerful titles by Native writers such as Love Medicine and The Marrow Thieves to classics like Go Tell It on the Mountain.
I teach in a public arts high school where students attend academic classes in the morning followed by an intense conservatory program in the afternoon. A diverse group of artistically talented young people from every ward in the city, our students' commute to school might be as short as fifteen minutes or as long as two and a half hours. Buzzing with energy, curiosity, and enthusiasm, our Scholar Artists are dedicated to improving not only their skills as artists, but also as thinkers, leaders, and innovators in a wide variety of fields.
My students are singers, dancers, visual artists, creative writers, actors, and musicians, and as artists, they thrive on literature that reflects the diverse world they inhabit.
Centering students' voices and stories are the heart of a teacher's work, and I am passionate about co-creating the learning space with students. In our AP Literature class this year, I want to offer a wide range of book club selections that both honor the identities present in my class, and also provide them with windows into experiences different from their own.
My Project
Last school year, I designed an independent reading project where AP Literature students selected a novel from a list of "trending titles" (texts frequently featured on the AP Exam) and presented their analytic, creative projects to the class. Not only did they demonstrate mastery of composing literary arguments, their creative pieces (original compositions! vocal performances! paintings!) were absolutely stunning.
As AP Literature Exam reader Farrah Hilton shares of her recent experience reading student essays on the 2020-21 AP Exam, "It was apparent that students are reading and teachers are giving students the autonomy to read what interests them while offering them challenging texts." She adds, "Students are thinking critically and carefully about what they are reading; they are questioning the implications presented in texts in their own lives.
For that, teachers should feel accomplished." (Hilton, Farrah. "2021 Reading Reflections" aplithelp.com)
Clearly, choice matters--for the individual student and the classroom as a whole. As their AP Literature teacher, it is my responsibility to empower students to select texts that they want to read and to create space for them to share what resonates with them. Where do they see beauty and truth in the text?
With the addition of four texts by Native writers--Louise Erdich's first novel Love Medicine (1984 National Book Critics Circle Award), Richard Wagamese's Indian Horse: a Novel (2013 Burt Award for First Nations), Cherie Dimaline's The Marrow Thieves (2018 Burt Award for First Nations), Stephen Graham Jones' Mapping the Interior (2017 Bram Stoker Award)--and classics like James Baldwin's Go Tell It on the Mountain, these diverse books examine a range of experiences to engage students, pique their curiosity, and and sharpen their skills as analytical readers. Equally if not more important, students will learn from each other as we co-create our classroom community and curriculum.
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