Writing for their lives

Jabari Mahiri and Soraya Sablo, from the University of California—Berkeley, looked into the writing practices of urban African American youth, many of whom were not motivated to do normal school writing.  What is interesting is that they found that many of these students who were not willing to write in school were often prolific writers in their own world after school.  These students were, in my own words, often alienated by their school world, finding the academic writing far removed from, and not relevant to their world.   Mahiri and Sabolo make the case that teachers should begin to include new definitions of literacy in the area of writing to encourage writing in school.

        Mahiri and Sablo cite quite a bit of previous research on the topic on the first page of the article.  One notable quote came from an author doing cross-cultural research, Street says: “…literacy is ultimately political.”  That little quote had quite a bit of pack to it and left me thinking, and wondering if that were true.  Isn’t literacy just being able to read and write?  What has that to do with politics?  For that matter, what can I, as a teacher, do about politics?  Then I thought about recent events in the state of Michigan with a state agenda that is huge and seems to be all about not paying for an education at all.  If this trend continues, Education will then become the privilege of the wealthy, mostly white male establishment.  These are people who can afford to send their children to exclusive private schools, while public education will continue to suffer.  When rich, white males—either politicians or owners of large corporations—dominate government, then the assumptions about what is valued in education will be those of rich, white males.

        That said, this still leave the problem for teachers of urban schools of how to develop literacy among African American students who feel alienated by traditional school writing—I think this is also true of many other minorities and of low-income working class white students.

        What Mahiri and Soblo seem to be suggesting through the authors and previous research the cite is that teacher should turn to  “vernacular writing.”  That includes things like oral story telling, diaries, letters (chat?), it also includes looking at “rhetorical devices common to African American literary language.  Can a connection be made between the “specific descriptions of knowledge structures taught in school as they relate to the knowledge structures constructed within nonschool social settings?”

        What Mahiri and Soblo do is they worked with two teachers, given the pseudonyms: Ms. Brown and Ms Parks, who would be willing to try working with African American students in a new way that would use their authentic writing out-of- school writing to examine literacy in a new context.  Finding students willing to share their work was not easy.  These students were leery of the system and while they were unwilling and/or unmotivated to do traditional schoolwork, Mahiri and Sobolo found that they were often prolific writers outside of the school context.  They selected two students who were willing to share their poems, plays and rap lyrics with them for the project: Keisha and Troy

Here is a poem by Kisha

Dreams

I have so many dreams to remember,

So many moments to cherish.

My life had no light until…

You, burning upon the sun;

To kiss you is a dream come true,

A moment to cherish

To have the pleasure of being

Around you is a blessing.

When you simply speak,

I am speechless.

When you smile,

I am paralyzed with life.

There isn’t a word in the world

To express the way I feel for you,

Not one.

But you, you are like the ocean

That glimmers in the night,

Like the birds that cry in the morning

I wish I could hold you forever,

But I dream you will stay with

And hold me

With incredible strength

Your features are so beautiful

They would blind the normal eye

But not mine

You are a dream and I

Want to have you

Over and over,

Again.

The authors then point out a list of literacy competencies that they can find in the poem, such as the use of simile and metaphor: “you are like the ocean…like the birds that cry in the morning”; oxymoron: “When you smile, I am paralyzed with life.”  What I noticed was the easy accessibility of this poem across culture.  Keisha’s play in rap form was more “cultural” in its language—more like a rap or flow:

Jus’ Living

Jus’ livin’ on the eastside taking a chill,

Watchin; young brothas being shot and killed.

Coming up fast, clocking Kash

Niggaz be having dreams, getting sot,

But it can’t last.

But at the same time the doing the crim,

Sitting behind bars without a nickel or a dime,

Can’t come out and kick it,

But I’mma wicked old fe-mac and that’s how I’m living.

The authors comment that this sort of writing reflects Keisha’s “desire to make sense of and rise above the circumstances of her own life.”  This makes the poem less universal than “Dreams” but also makes it perhaps more authentic writing.  The Authors report that her play, “has and intricate plot, well-rounded characters, and complex thematic considerations.”  She seems to have an eye for details.  The setting for the play is Oakland, California and her descriptions, again according to the authors are precise and detailed.  The plot centers on a young man who is pressured into a gang.  With no job prospects he turns to selling drugs for a living.  When rival gang members try to kill the young man, his mother, trying to protect him, gets caught in the crossfire and is killed.  Keisha later told the authors that the play was based on her older brother and their mother.

        What I take home from this article is that the authors are showing us the authentic writing from the world of urban African American high school students and modeling for us how such work can be analyzed for many of the classic benchmarks used in traditional school writing: similes, metaphor, plot and character development and much more.  But by using authentic writing from the lives of their students, teachers can tap into material that is more motivating to their students.  As Mahari and Sablo conclude: “ …it is erroneous to conclude that writing, in and of itself, was unimportant or ‘uncool’ to these students; rather, the yesisted what they viewed as the unauthentic nature of many of their experiences with academic writing.”  Writing was important to them for a number of reasons.  Two of these reasons are particularly important.  First because, as the authors note, it helps them to make sense or “come to terms” with the world they live in; and second writing provided a “safe haven” from the unsafe and traumatic world the live in.