After Things Fall Apart: Relevant Reading for a Post-Colonial Classroom
My students need Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's novel Purple Hibiscus to make their study of colonialism more relevant and to grow their skills and identities as readers.
My students represent the Bay Area’s diversity. They represent innumerable cross-sections of race, orientation, socioeconomic background, reading level, and learning difference. They are approximately 70% students of color, 18% have IEPs or 504s for their learning needs, and 53% qualify for free/reduced lunch. In my 2017-18 classroom, at just one small group you would meet “Fernando” (a Latinx student reading far below grade level but devouring puzzles and comics), “Diarra” (a prolific reader originally from Senegal), “Andrew” (a Chinese student reading at a college level who lights up on a basketball court), and “Alexis” (simultaneously grappling with her multiracial identity, budding feminism, and ADHD) all learning with and from each other.
Perhaps the most beautiful thing about our remarkably diverse student body is that they join together to become agents for social change.
These students research social change movements through texts, group work, and engagement with local nonprofit leaders, activists, and community members. These students plan and engage in activism like marching to and speaking at City Hall over gun violence and immigration law. These students are coming together, communing across categories of difference, and truly changing the world.
My Project
We are overhauling the curriculum to include more focus on post- and anti-colonialism so that the links between History and students' communities and newsfeeds are clearer for these students and activists. In order to make this new focus work, we need to update the books students read alongside their study of colonialism.
Reading Purple Hibiscus will make study of the effects of colonialism more relevant and engaging for our students in ways that will help them further their work as scholars and activists.
Several students (ranging from a 3rd grade to college reading level) read this book in small groups as a pilot. They reviewed the book highly, saying it was both fun to read and very effective in helping them understand historical and contemporary events and the impacts those events have on real people. Students in our pilot suggested an overhaul in the curriculum to have all students read Adichie's book to make the curriculum come more alive and to make reading more engaging... And we listened.
Your support will help us make their vision a reality for years to come.
Half of students from low‑income households
Data about students' economic need comes from the National Center for Education Statistics, via our partners at MDR Education. Learn more
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