Black History

Well, it's been W-A-Y too long since I posted something here, but as you may know, my father had some heart trouble a couple of months ago and that rocked my world a little bit. For about a month (or two or three) afterwards I couldn't bring myself to read any of my YA books. And you know I love to read YA books. I don't know if it was because I was too emotionally drained and/or exhausted or what, but I just couldn't do it. Not a great way to go into the spring semester and my YAL course. I ended up teaching some of the "classic" YA novels at the beginning of the semester--books I've read so many times I can talk about them in my sleep (The Chocolate War, The Outsiders, Forever). So that bought me some time. And now I'm BAAAA---AAAAACCCCKKKK and making up for lost time.

I was recently invited to join the book committee for the Children's Defense Fund Freedom Schools program. If you haven't heard about the Freedom Schools program, check it out here. I feel so honored to be a part of a great group of women who decide which books the Freedom Schools scholars will read each summer. The committee meets at the beautiful Alex Haley Farm in Clinton, TN, for a weekend in the fall and spring and we read, and read, and read, and talk about what we're reading, and write lesson plans for what we're reading. It's good stuff.

One of the books I've gotten a chance to read through this work is Kekla Magoon's The Rock and the River. I had tried to read this book last year and had a hard time getting into it--just couldn't find my rhythm, or couldn't engage with Sam, the 13 year-old main character, or something. But I gave it another try and boy, am I glad I did.

Sam is stuck between childhood and adulthood, between his father--a friend (fictional) of Dr. MLK's, and a leading voice for non-violent protest during the latter years of the Civil Rights Movement--and his older brother, who has just joined the more militant Black Panther party. Sam finds the Black Panthers seductive--their slick black jackets and berets, and their violent actions that bring about quicker changes than pacifism seems to. Ultimately, Sam is frustrated by his father's patient hope, and must decide if he will be "the rock," and stand in place, or "the river," a force for change. Lots of important history to be learned here!


Another great YA historical fiction novel that I love, love, love is Rita Williams-Garcia's One Crazy Summer. I love it as much for the historical snapshot it provides, as I do for its portrayal of a complex mother-daughter relationship.

Here's a good review about the book from a great blog you should get to know, The Classroom Bookshelf: (it has lots of good ideas for teaching this work, and lots of links to useful historical websites)

In 1968, the nation was in tumult; Martin Luther King was shot in April, Bobby Kennedy in early June. Right in the middle of this year of change, Delphine and her sisters arrive in Oakland, California to spend “one crazy summer” with the mother who left them years before. Cecile is not interested in being a mother, not interested in doing “what mothers do.”Delphine observes: “In the animal kingdom, the mother bird brings back all she’s gathered for the day and drops it into the open mouths of each squawking bird to be fed. Cecile looked at us as if it didn’t occur to her that we would be hungry and she’d have to do what mothers do: feed their young.” As the summer progresses, Delphine and her sisters, attending a summer camp run by Black Panthers, are introduced to new ways of thinking about race and identity, responsibility and community. Delphine’s worldview shifts as she compares and contrasts the beliefs of her Southern grandmother, who is the primary caregiver to the girls alongside their father in Brooklyn, to those of her mother in California, beliefs introduced more through her mother’s words than through her actions. With honesty and humor, Williams-Garcia has crafted a variety of strong and passionate girls and women. The growing pains Delphine and her sisters experience mirror the larger pains of a nation acclimating to the changes brought forth by the civil rights movement, the cultural revolution, and anti-war efforts, and foreshadow the shifting family dynamics ushered in by the women’s movement of the 1970s.

If non-fiction's more your thing, or you're looking for some good YA non-fiction for your classroom, check out Susan Bartoletti's They Called Themselves the KKK: The Birth of an American Terrorist Group. This book is terrifying. Just look at that cover. It should invoke all kinds of fear and terror in you, and it does. You'll learn all kinds of stuff you may or may not want to know about the KKK's origins and gross misdeeds. I didn't know the KKK was formed in Tennessee, in Pulaski, TN, to be exact. (How nice that I live in the state that can claim that one). I didn't know the KKK had its hand in the murder of Emmitt Till, the murder of numerous Freedom Riders, the 1963 Birmingham church bombing--and that's just the ones the media bothered to show up at. That doesn't count the hundreds of thousands of innocent men and women terrorized, murdered, raped, lynched, that we don't know about, and that the nation's (white) leaders knowingly turned its eyes away from. This is another one of those books that makes you not like white people so much. This book will make you angry. Maybe that's what it's supposed to do.