For at least the past 4 months, I’ve been struck by how painfully relevant my research on violence is. It’s hard to keep things straight because violence against Black and Brown people is so rampant. If we consider the past few years, even a very partial list of those killed (not just harassed or injured) by police (not civilians) becomes shocking: 7-year-old Aiyana Stanley-Jones, 12-year-old Tamir Rice, 12-year-old Santos Rodriguez, 13-year-old Andy Lopez Cruz, 14-year-old Cameron Tillman, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Ezell Ford, John Crawford, Mateo Carlo Machella, Israel Hernandez Llach, Constantino Garcia, Carlos Mejia, Osman Hernandez, Omar Abrego, Rakia Boyd, and countless other women and trans men and women whose names we don’t know.
Especially because my book Living with Lynching centers on how people coped when they were so clearly under attack, I thought this would be a good time to revisit an in-depth conversation I had with my OSU colleague Pablo Tanguay about the book and the journey that led me to write it. The interview is in 4 parts. In this first part, we talk about my growing up in Sugar Land, Texas; my experiences as an undergraduate at Ohio Wesleyan University; and how those experiences made me interested in graduate study. Hint: Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye and a fabulous internship in New York City played major roles.
Especially when everything is against certain populations, it’s hard to overstate the value of reading and being willing to expose oneself (and the young people in our lives) to a variety of experiences.
Have been reading your blog posts and watched Part 1 of the interview. Thank you so much for sharing about how you were blown away by The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison! Read that as a college freshman and remember the discussion that followed and how it really impacted so many! What a powerful piece of writing! Am looking forward to reading more posts and watching the other parts of your interview. Thank you for listing all of the names of those who have been impacted by violence. You listed many more people, especially women, that at present, am completely unaware of their stories and so you have given me many names to research. Hope to get your book soon as there is so much to learn!!!
I also enjoy following your tweets on Twitter (am @f5th on Twitter).
When you mentioned Shakespeare, wanted to mention that we just were awarded a grant to explore Shakespeare from a new perspective: A Midsummer Night’s S.T.E.A.M. We are working at having our students grades 3-8 recreate Midsummer Night’s Dream to make it more multicultural, more relevant, and more developmentally appropriate with a focus on getting kids to explore diversity, science, technology, engineering and fine arts. The older students in our gifted program will be comparing and contrasting it to pieces of literature that have been written by a diverse group of authors. They will be assuming leadership roles as they prepare activities for younger students (pre-k through grade 3). We hope that giving upper elementary & middle school kids the chance to be leaders and role models for the little kids in our community will be a worthwhile endeavor.
We hope to make the experience authentic, dynamic, and relevant. We are also starting an online book club for kids that will be exploring these themes too.
Would love to collaborate with you!
Colleen
Thank you so much, Colleen. It was nice getting the chance to walk down memory lane a bit. Pablo asked great questions.
Yes, there seems to be no end to opportunities to “update” Shakespeare. I certainly see value in these sorts of programs, but I think it’s important to at least make room for talking about how these kinds of efforts keep centering Shakespeare and centering whiteness. What is built into these sorts of programs is that everyone gets a clear sense of what “real,” “universal” literature is. The work of “a diverse group of authors” is placed in a subordinate position to Shakespeare—as happens in our society more generally with all white people and pretty much all white authors. This dynamic almost can’t be avoided because it’s also woven into what people get grant money for and what doesn’t generally attract grant money. So, the trick is to make room for students and teachers to acknowledge the hierarchy that’s getting reinforced. When we leave that unmarked, we are being dishonest about how inclusive it actually is. The truth is that Shakespeare is setting the limits for how “others” are seen. And only if others’ work illuminates Shakespeare in some way does it make sense to include them.
These challenges are nothing new, of course. As I’m guessing you do, I think it’s important for educators to acknowledge the unspoken messages being sent. I had too many teachers who didn’t, and I know that many of my colleagues are operating from the same lack of awareness. As I said to an aspiring teacher the other day, anything we’re not willing to be self-critical about becomes a weakness, and in a hierarchical society, people with influence over others who aren’t self-critical have weaknesses that hurt others more than themselves.
Feel free to keep me posted!
–Koritha