A (Long) Reflection on Multicultural Young Adult Literature, Zines, and the Need for Being Intentional

I was discussing my ideas and research questions for my dissertation with a cohort member when I had one of those deep epiphanies that feel like lightning across brain synapses - which is saying a lot for 7pm on a Monday after teaching. A reoccurring topic in our classes has been the need to be reflective and introspective of our own identities before attempting to work with teachers, district members, or students. In discussing culturally relevant pedagogy (Ladson-Billings, 1995; Gay, 2002) the need for teachers to understand their own intersectional identities was a frequent theme. 

This got me thinking: if my own research is on student reading groups and community change, have I reflected on how young adult literature has helped to shape my understanding of my students, my practices, and the work we do together? 

What opportunities have I missed by letting unconscious work that I am assuming is clear to my students go without purposeful intent? 

What assumptions do I hold about my students and their views of the texts that we read?

Is my goal to just let students figure out why I am selecting multicultural texts that represent intersections in their identities?

To the latter, I know not. 

My aims, if I'm taking a moment to actually (finally) think about them, are to build a community with my students through a shared and growing understanding of culture where students are invited to participate in connecting with what we read and sharing those connections. 

While this of course is critical to the research I hope to one do, this is critical to the work that I passionately believe in. How can I expect students to just know that this is the goal if I have not made it clear, and worse, have subconsciously carried it in my heart?

I have built a library of thousands of books in our learning space. We have been reading books all year across cultures. I have done "good work" because I knew in my heart that it was best for students but I never stopped to interrogate the why or even set goals for the outcomes. Skills-based teaching goes horribly amiss if the skill being practiced is not centered, levels and scaffolding are not predetermined, and goals or 'I can statements' aren't communicated to students. We have to consider intentionality with more thank just standards because teaching students (as we know) is far more than just academic standards. If it was, then why would we bother with texts or lessons from anything other than the textbook? Hoping our students happen upon or trip into our goals for building a shared and growing understanding of culture where students are invited to participate is quite miraculous. I should play the lottery more. Participatory culture is defined by Jenkins (2006) as 

"A participatory culture is a culture with relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement, strong support for creating and sharing one’s creations, and some type of informal mentorship whereby what is known by the most experienced is passed along to novices."

There is a great website hosting his work [HERE] as well as a great Ted Talk Video:

Alright - so it might seem that I am being tangential to my original desire to reflect - but this is my point. How can we expect students to participate in something we have not yet reflected on?

I just finished reading The Poet X with my students. We talked about it a bit along the way, but if I think about the purposeful work that I have done with my students in the above goal, I would say that I failed to achieve it. We read the entirety of Elizabeth Acevedo's 330-page book in about three weeks while doing skills-based assignments, and while I know that some students had cultural awakenings, new cultural understandings, and made cultural connections - this did not lead to a stronger community in the classroom where we were participating in this work with each other. Several students shared with me the connections they made with their own ethnicities, new ways of understanding the Bible through a cultural lens, or how they deeply understood sexism and misogyny in the text. There were deep connections made, but they were individual, and they were not part of a growing classroom community. This, I feel, is much closer to the 'end of a book' moment that we had as students - the very kind of thing I want to work against with my dissertation research.

Undergrad Experiences

The first YAL I ever read was at Kennesaw State University in my undergrad with professors like Michelle Goodsite and Dr. Brian Gillis. While I had a choice to read the YAL I wanted in some classes, Dr. Gillis had a reading list that we went through which pushed me outside of reading books with white characters who ultimately looked a lot like me. Both were fundamental in my understanding and appreciation of the power of YAL in the classroom, and I am thankful for all that they poured into me. It was in Dr. Gillis's class that I first read The House of the Scorpion (2002) by Nancy Farmer which while it was fantasy, centered on a young Mexican boy's struggles south of the border in a fictional land between Mexico and the United States. That same semester he also required Bronx Masquerade by Nikki Grimes, and Elijah of Buxton by Christopher Paul Curtis. Three of the ten books that were required, overall, could be considered multicultural YAL. While this strikes me as a low number today, in 2014 and for myself at the time - these were the first YAL books featuring non-white characters I had ever read. This was my first taste of reading cultures beyond my own.

Bronx Masquerade by Nikki Grimes stands out to me (and still does) as one of the most powerful experiences I ever had with a book. I had so many questions about the dozen or more characters and their lives, especially as a white male, pre-service teacher who went to school in the suburbs. Would my students be this...complicated? Dramatic? Passionate? Would drugs, pregnancy, crime, abuse be their story too? I can remember these thoughts as clearly as I can now reflect on conversations that were missed about them. I can now see the need for a professor to have said that "these aren't the only stories" in a way that went further than the Adichie "Danger of a Single Story" Ted Talk we'd see in our classes at least once. We needed a conversation to go along with these books that while these books were great at challenging single stories we had as white educators, these books could also become single stories. 

Currently, my classroom is full of dead Black boys, murdered by police officers - a dozen books on my shelves feature this now common trope. Does this happen to Black boys? Yes. Far too often. Is this the only story we should read about Black boys? Hell no. But going back to my reflection on the early days of my YAL multicultural awakenings, Nikki Grimes gave me LOTS of stories in one book. There were stories of trouble, struggle, and pain - but there were also stories of joy, grit, and beating the odds as a person of color growing up in the public education system. Ultimately, Grimes presents hope.

When we have texts in our syllabus, we need the intention to go with the books to achieve goals. Having books featuring multicultural characters does not create diversity or anything close to my stated goal of a community of growing understanding and appreciation. This particular course had a stated goal including: "This course provides an understanding for selecting and using diverse young adult literature in middle grades and high school classrooms." While it achieved much of this, the "using" part fails without the intention (and self-awareness). Even in my first experiences with YAL, I was not asked to reflect on my own intersectionality or multicultural awareness. While this is perhaps a lot to ask of a public university in North Georgia nearly a decade ago, as you can see I have just now stumbled and tripped into my own need to do this work before I can get to the "use" part in my own classroom, despite the thousands of dollars spent and a Masters degree from the same university.

The First Year

In my classroom, I continued to have epiphanies about culture from the YAL I consumed. My first year teaching was at Martin Luther King Jr. High School in Dekalb County, Georgia. I was one of a handful of white teachers with a 99.7% Black population. I would give a lot to have that year back to do again. While I know this is the reflection of many teachers in their first years, there are other reasons for this desire due to my own limited understanding of the students I taught, their communities, and of course, my own intentionality. I was so ignorant: I didn't know most of what I didn't know. We read mostly from the textbook (this is how it's always been done) and were taught the same texts that had always been taught. We made our own assessments, and never looked at the data with anything more than a deficit understanding of our students. I remember teaching mostly white cannon - works like Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, Antigone, and Oedipus took up an entire semester between the three of them. We read everything those poor textbooks had to offer on the plays - cover to cover. For a class that bore the title "World Literature," we really were an Ancient Greek theater class. I will grant myself a little grace in that I had a bomb-ass classroom library.

Thanks to a grant (that I didn't even know I had been submitted for thanks to my university supervisor) I won for $1000, I purchased hundreds of YAL books. Did I use them in teaching? Of course not. That would be silly...right? I mean we had our curriculum on our syllabus! So the years I spent being immersed in an undergrad program that highlighted nothing but the benefits of YAL were momentarily lost. I would find them again - but the irony is quite thick that I had thousands of dollars in books (I even spent some of my own money) that we never used. Students would check them out, sometimes, and I would talk with the students about them excitedly. They saw themselves as readers and practiced this love every chance they got. While someone looking at my classroom would have seen that YAL was important to me, someone in my class would not have that same understanding. I wasn't even reading the books either, save maybe a couple a year. I must remember grace - this was my first year - but it was an important step in the journey nonetheless.

It wasn't until I attended the Georgia Council Teachers of English's (GCTE) yearly conference in February that the wheels would start to turn again. This might have been one of the most important conferences I've attended in all my years of teaching combined; I was reminded there about the importance of YAL and even relearned its application in the classroom. I think it is important for teachers to learn from teachers - more than just university professors - about the practical application of YAL. Truthfully, it takes hearing it multiple times and multiple ways and both theory and practice - but this conference made it click in ways I could implement immediately.

Zines changed my world. Zines are miniature magazines that have a rich, underground culture in subversive publishing. They are made with sharpies and paper and ideas. Dr. Kyle Jones, who would later become a trusted friend and mentor, had an amazing workshop on Zines at GCTE and because of that one session, my teaching praxis would be forever altered and augmented. Being February and a first-year teacher, I took this idea straight back to my classroom, and a week later students were making Black history zines. I asked their zines to feature an author of their choice and a text of their choice by that author. Each page of their zine had a purpose and goals. There wasn't a way to do them "wrong." I put together poetry from Black authors, pulled books from my classroom library, and found short stories. I put this pile of work before my students - all of it I had self-selected. Had I done any reflection on my own intersectionality? Nope. Had I stopped to think about the implications and realities that this intersectionality had in our classroom? Nope. Had I encouraged my students to do any reflection beforehand either? Nope. Was this new ground in terms of my preparation just months before, and the work being done in my high school? Yes. Resoundingly. The zines were beautiful - and many were filled with hope, joy, and exploration. Some were done for the sake of an assignment. They did not share these zines - they turned them in to me, and like some dragon, I hoarded them all, reading them. They never were returned. There was no publication. But all of these pieces, like a broken puzzle, would find their home elsewhere in many different puzzles.

Years Two and Three

My next school had a much larger portion of white students - over 30%, and was closer to North Georgia than Atlanta. It was the burbiest of the burbs. Independent reading became stronger in our classroom, and the collection of books on my shelves began to become more focused and culture-driven. I wanted to build a more culturally diverse and equity-driven classroom. I purposefully sought out books to represent girls and people of color. Before, most of my shelves were dominated by the white protagonists I had read about in my undergrad. We'd start off the year doing book tastings, but at some point, the curriculum would inevitably get in the way and the carefully laid plans would be waylayed by testing. February, however, was special. In my first year at this school, I brought back the Zines and Black History Month. This time, I was determined to do it right. I let students have a choice, but I still chose all the texts. I looked at contemporary sources - music like Jamilla Woods and Blk Girl Soldier and some of her poetry like Ghazal for White Hen Pantry We did a whole text set on Blackness from around the world. For some students, it was the first time they realized not all Black people lived in Africa (actual student conversation). It was...interesting?

Zines are intimately personal. They are passion projects. They are reflections of the soul in ways that essays can only dream of. In mixing together pieces of you with what exists outside the body, zines show that special point of intersection - the actual transaction of the reader and the text. In this predominately white environment, students were forced to appreciate Black authors and writing for a grade. This was deeply disquieting - I'll never forget the moment - when I watched some of my honors and gifted students create what was much closer to sarcasm or a farce with what amounted to "I love Black people." Where were their hearts? What about their identities? Their experiences? Their feelings? Their connections? It was all replaced with an assignment and a grade - a desire to do school and be successful. Zines, Black History Month, and Black culture were reduced to teacher-pleasing activities. I can only imagine how the students of color felt - mainly because I never asked them.

In collecting the zines - I learned so much about my students. Yes, this was creepy and very much like early white ethnographers - but I learned about hair. I learned about myths and stereotypes. I began to finally see Black as varied as the stars and slowly my own monolithic misconceptions started to break down. I began to learn my learners - a concept that would become the cornerstone of my current pedagogical and personal views. I saw their cultures, backgrounds, hopes, and fears. I saw what was important to them in the texts I had selected. They shared with me about food, hair types, family expectations, friendship dynamics, relationships, and more. Black lives from Cuba, Ghana, Belize, and all parts of the world were present in the zines. I also saw white students in true allyship - less performative work. I saw white students attempt to reconcile their experiences traveling and "othering" people, but also working through that to find truth and love and connection. The zines and the experiences making them were perfectly imperfect.

Finally, by year three I had a lot more figured out with zines. Students selected texts, traded zines with each other, and students were encouraged to pick their own culture for the project. This involved some intersectional work, but it wasn't intentional. Years later, and I'm just now putting the pieces together between the "teaching persona," single stories, intersectional identities, the need for reflection and intentional praxis, and culturally relevant, responsive, and sustaining practices. I feel like I'm at the very beginning steps, and I'm seven years in. Could I have arrived at this new threshold without all these previous experiences? Maya Angelou, who I proudly used in that first-year zine project said, "Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better."

How much reflection on teaching is asking for forgiveness?

Conclusion

To credit Dr. Gillis and Ms. Goodsite, I would not have come to YAL until much later (if at all) had it not been for their classes over a decade ago. While we watched "Danger of a Single Story," I failed to make the connection to the texts I was consuming. I never paused and examined my own story. My whiteness and intersectionality remained invisible to me for many years until Dr. Jennifer Dail - Also at Kennesaw State University had us specifically examine this in our Master's program. George Floyd's murder and subsequent uprising, as well as the many other Black lives lost through white murder (which were publicized), brought a growing awareness in me. I read White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo (2018) and started efforts to shift from awareness to activism. While DiAngelo has come under fire and ultimately recenters whiteness, this was another important work in my own personal growth. Despite teaching with Breonna Taylor's face from "O" magazine behind me, I still was not making it clear to my students my ultimate goal. I was still not being intentional with the "why" behind the nearly 100% multicultural texts we read or the critical lens we used to analyze them. A student I taught in 10th grade who is now in a new course, Multi-Cultural Literature which counts as 12th grade English as an alternative to the traditional British Literature, told the teacher that "this is just like the work we were doing in Mr. Rhoades' class." Yet we did not achieve the above-stated goal that year either.

I'm still learning, but I'm doing better about reflecting. My Ed.D. program at Georgia State University uses the cohort model, and I'm so blessed to work with the amazing folx and incredible professors. I read voraciously and critically. I've read dozens of books and hundreds of articles - but all of this reading is useless without reflection and action.

To paraphrase - when we know better, we can do better.

Gay, G. (2002). Preparing for culturally responsive teaching. Journal of Teacher Education, 53(2), 106-116. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022487102053002003

 Jenkins, H., John, D., & Catherine, T. M. F. (2006). Confronting the challenges of participatory culture: media education for the 21st century. An occasional paper on digital media and learning. 

Ladson-Billings, G. (1995, 01/01/). Toward a theory of culturally relevant pedagogy. American Educational Research Journal, 32(3), 465-491.