I'm getting ready to teach Beloved by Toni Morrison, and part of the unit includes front-loading thematic and historical texts to prepare students for reading and analyzing the novel. It could be argued that the novel's purpose is to make the reader uncomfortable, not only with the content of the novel but also with the process of coming to understand that multiple truths can be present at one time. When we learn a new truth, it doesn't replace the old. It adds complexity and nuance and makes us better humans for sitting in that ambivalence. One of the frustrations students have is with the school system and the ways that it has historically revered the American ethos without revealing and teaching its faults.
Before listening to episode 1 of the 1619 Project by Nikole Hannah-Jones, "The Fight for a True Democracy," students are going to read the poem "Declaration" by Tracy K. Smith, the two-term Poet Laureate of the United States. In writing the poem, she read The Declaration of the Independence and then practiced erasure, whittling down the words on the page until it reveals a message that created a "Declaration" about America. I love the practice of erasure to create this poem as it evokes the erasure of the painful and dark history that my students want to learn more about.
"Declaration" by Tracy K. Smith from Wade in the Water (2018).
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