#disrupttext

Disrupt the Text & Decolonize Your Mind - The Book List

Last month I wrote a brief essay (Disrupt the Text & Decolonize Your Mind) encouraging all teachers to rethink the books they read in the classroom if they are truly committed to having an anti-racist curriculum. A few days after my post a friend called me asking for recommendations and I thought, I didn’t go far enough with that last essay; I didn’t give any book recommendations. Well, now I’m here to fix that mistake. Behold a massive book list for your perusal. The books link to Bookshop.org where you can support independent book stores.

If you’re interested in stories about Black Lives, I wrote a book list in June, Celebrating All Aspects of Black Lives, that listed a number of books that didn’t focus on Black pain but the diversity of Black life.

Short Story Collections

1. Fresh Ink Anthology

2. Body Talk: 37 Voices Explore Our Radical Anatomy

3. Once Upon an Eid: Stories of Hope and Joy

4. A Thousand Beginnings and Endings

5. #NotYourPrincess

Books on Friendship

1. The Inexplicable Logic of Life by Benjamin Alire Saenz

2. Saints and Misfits by S.K. Ali

3. Mexican White Boy by Matt De La Pena

4. Labyrinth Lost by Zoraida Cordova

Teens Changing the World

1. Yes, No, Maybe So by Becky Albertalli and Aisha Saeed

2. This is My Brain in Love by I. W. Gregorio

3. Hearts Unbroken by Cynthia Leitich Smith

4. Watch Us Rise by Ellen Hagan and Renee Watson

Teens Finding Themselves in the World

1. Juliet Takes a Breath by Gabby Rivera

2. Darius the Great is Not Okay by Adib Khorram

3. I am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter by Erika L. Sanchez

4. With the Fire on High by Elizabeth Acevedo

5. The Love and Lies of Rukhsana Ali by Sabina Khan

Memoir

1. All Boys Are Blue by George M. Johnson

2. I am Malala by Malala Yousafzai

3. They Called Us Enemy by George Takei

4. Almost American Girl by Robin Ha

5. Banned Book Club by Ryan Estrada and Kim Hyun Sook

I also had some friends who teach AP books and wanted more mature recommendations so here is a list of some adult books that would also be great for the classroom, and for your own reading as well.

1. Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler

2. The Bird King by G. Willow Wilson

3. Exit West by Mohsin Hamid

4. Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

5. Book of Lost Saints by Daniel Jose Older

This list is just a small sampling of the different types of books you can include in your class. If your district mandates what books you can read, you can use these books as a supplemental or even counter narrative. In addition, you can encourage your colleagues to use diverse books as a supplemental as well. For example, before COVID sent us all home, our 6th grade Social Studies teacher was reading Aru Shah and the End of Time as her students studied India. And let me share a heartwarming story with you. Before we decided to shun Sherman Alexie I was teaching "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian" to my 7th graders. The kids went wild for the novel, but there was one young man who really connected to it. He was a new student to my class who had just moved to Los Angeles from a reservation. Prior to the book, he hated reading but he saw himself in the novel and got really into the book. In a parent meeting, his aunt informed me that he had checked out of school emotionally but the book, and the activities we did in class, brought him back in. He was excited to read and excited to do his work and excited to come to school. That is the power that seeing yourself in the literature can do for young kids. And that should be our goals as teachers. Not to turn our students away from their education but to make them run towards it.

Decolonize Your Mind & Disrupt the Text

Yesterday an old tweet came across my timeline on Facebook and said this “Academia’s obsession with preserving the white man’s ‘classic’ literature within secondary schools’s curriculum is the reason why kids outgrown their love of reading” @kavlangela. The person who shared it also mentioned that the canon also upholds white supremacy. In my friend’s posting there were teachers who felt a certain kind of way about both statements and made comments wondering why change has to come at “the exclusion of ‘dead white guy’ pieces.” The teacher’s thought was that we need to continue teaching these “classics” because otherwise students wouldn’t feel ready for college.

Whoo boy! Needless to say I had to take a moment before I responded as I was just ready to scream, but it brought me to a deeper thought. With folks, teachers specifically, wanting to learn to be anti-racist (and this is a good thing!) many will go buy books to get informed but will still teach the same old, same old. So I ask, if you are truly trying to become ant-racist but still teaching the old western canon and not diversifying your class reading list, are you truly doing the work of becoming anti-racist?

I know I am in a privileged position where I get to choose the books I want to teach and many teachers are fighting their districts to make changes to their school reading list. Those of you that are putting up the good fight - Thank you! This essay is not for you.

This essay is for the teachers who might just need that extra push to recognize the ways they uphold white supremacy without even really thinking about it. If you are able to change your reading list, now is the time to do so. There are so many resources available (like this website) where you can find books from BIPOC authors. There is really no reason to say, “I need to stick to this list so my students feel like they are able to compete in college”. I never read Hemingway until I was in my MFA program and I did just fine. Your students will be fine. They will actually have an advantage over their classmates who only read the “Dead White Men” because they will have been exposed to a variety of voices instead of just one voice. They will have a deeper, more empathetic, view of the world as they will have experienced different cultures, view points, ways of living.

Lastly, just a bit of advice for all doing the work of being antiracist and teaching BIPOC stories in your classroom - be careful of which books you are choosing to share with your students. Please don’t just focus on Black pain, only Latinx immigrant stories, etc. because by doing so you also create harm. While those stories are valid, create empathy, and teach us about life, what happens is that those are the only stories about a group that gets told and not the true, rich, diverse lives within a culture. So, expand your reading list some more. If you are stuck or stifled by your district, choose a short story anthology which you can use as supplemental reading. There really is so much work out there to choose from, that you really have no excuse.

A Few Days in Baltimore: NCTE 2019

Last year was my first NCTE annual conference and I was completely overwhelmed. Trying to balance sessions with visiting the exhibit hall and all the author signings, whew! This year, I was clearly more prepared and came in with a plan. Did my plan work? No, but I did attend sessions I really wanted to attend and I got a lot out of the conference.

This year’s theme was “Spirited Inquiry” and I noticed a specific trend in many of the sessions - specifically a call to #disruptTexts and to decolonize the curriculum. I sat in one of these sessions for a hot minute and realized that I was not the audience for this session, so I left. I’m glad that there were so many of these types of sessions to get teachers to rethink the novels they teach and to look outside their own bubble and use #ownvoices texts.

One of my favorite sessions was the Black Authors Roundtable and the conversations we had with the authors and among the other teachers at the table was invigorating. Among us teachers there was a wide variety of teaching experiences with a fairly young teacher to a veteran boarding school teacher. Our student populations were just as diverse as we were, but we all agreed that our students needed to be exposed to different voices. Our conversations were so good that time went by so fast and when the session was over, none of us really wanted to stop chatting. It was a great session and I was glad that I got to be a part of it.

Another powerful session was a panel with Black and Latinx authors about raising the voice of Black and Brown girls. So many wise statements by all the authors but it had me thinking about how to raise the voices of my Latinx girls who often let the boys dominate discussions. Of course, exposing them to Latinx authors and other women of color helps (and is what I already do) but it made me reflect on what I could do more. It was a great discussion and the room was full of positivity.