Speak

I finished this book about a month ago but I thought it deserved a comment. I tried reading it once over a year ago and just didn't think it was that great. Then, the teacher below me started teaching it and the kids loved it. One of the girls on the Basketball team told me it was her favorite book ever so I thought it deserved a second try. Again, it didn't really catch me at the beginning, but I think it has something in there that everyone can relate too. A goofy or arrogant teacher, a jerk jock, shyness, awkward stages, the whole gammit of teenage living. I can see why it appeals to young readers, but I still don't think it has as much literary merit as it leads on to having. Definitely an easy read.

Another YA book

So my classroom is hooked up with scholastic's Read 180 program. It is a reading intervention program that is designed to boost student's reading levels. I'm anxious to see how it works for my little hoodlums. Anyway, this new program has me reading a lot of Young Adult Lit. This last week I read Sweetgrass. It is a story about a young girls plight to save her family from smallpox. It really made me think about what the white man did to the natives when my ancestors first showed up on this great land. I know there were a lot of terrible things that happened (Ben is reading Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee and he tells me all about the wars and massacres) but the smallpox virus sounds like it must have been one of the worst things to have helped wipe out our native people. Sweetgrass herself shows the courage it must have taken to survive this horror. Surprisingly enough the story has a happy ending. One of hope for a bright future - rich in culture and history.

Insight

I've been reading "Black Boy" the past few weeks. I love it. I think of my students often as I turn the pages. What must it be like to know that people think you are inferior, just because of your skin color. Life was hard for Richard Wright early in the 20th century. I keep looking forward to his breakthrough as a great American novelist. I'm more than half way through and he has just begun reading the works of famous white authors. Here is what he has to say about this new knowledge reading has given him, "I could endure the hunger. I had learned to live with hate. But to feel that there were feelings denied me, that the very breath of life itself was beyond my reach, that more than anything else hurt, wounded me. I had a new hunger" (Wright, 250). Have I ever had to hunger so for something? Was there every anything, a power of sorts, that I desired but was denied. I can't imagine being shunned from the light of knowledge and intelligence. What must it be like to feel as though you were banned from using your brain to its fullest capacity. I am so grateful I have never had to live in such horrific circumstances. I admire Mr. Wright for searching after that knowledge he was so wrongfully denied.

Since I've been working in an inner city school I have contemplated similar thoughts. I feel like my students are not given the same opportunities for learning as white middle class students back west, or in the private schools of the East. I believe the American government is doing a huge disservice to my students. I don't know if its right to blame the government, should I blame all American people. But no matter whose fault it is I wish the denial of knowledge would stop. Why would we want such a large group of people to stay uneducated. Is it so they can feel the meaningless jobs our society demands? Is is so we can continue to blame social problems on a group of Urban people? How many of my students hunger for knowledge as Wright did? I think the answer is many. We are cheating them. We are leaving them in a shattered system that denies them basic American rights, just because of the color of their skin.

Whirligig

I've been reading a lot of young adult lit lately, makes sense since I'm a High School English teacher. I recently finished Whirligig; it was pretty good, not the best, but good. I really liked the theme of penance running through the novel. I do believe that is something teenagers need to understand. There is forgiveness for our mistakes, no matter how great they are. Most of the time the challenging part is forgiving ourselves. Others are there to help with that, just as the artist helps Brent see the good in himself at the end of his cross country journey.

As I watch my students I just pray they could see the good in themselves. I don't think any of us realize our own greatness. And sometimes it does take a journey, or a sacrifice of some sorts, to truly forgive ourselves and love again.

50 greatest books of all time

1. 1984 George Orwell
2. Invisible Man Ralph Ellison
3. Middle March George Elliot
4. Great Expectations Charles Dickens
5. Great Gatsby F Scott Fitzergald
6. Wuthering Heights Emily Bronte
7. Ulysess James Joyce
8. One Hundred Years of Solitude Gabriel Marquiez Garcia
9. Love in the Time of Cholera Gabriel Marquiez Garcia
10. Don Quixote Miguel De Cerantes
11. Absalom Absalom William Faulkner
12. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain
13. Crime and Punishment Fyodor M Dostoyevsky
14. War and Peace Leo Tolstoy
15. Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen
16. The Idiot Fyodor M Dostoyevsky
17. The Sound and The Fury William Faulkner
18. The Portrait of a Lady Henry James
19. To the Lighthouse Virginia Wolf
20. Bleak House Charles Dickens
21. Vanity Fair William Makepeace Thackeray
22. Catcher in the Rye J.D. Salinger
23. Nostromo Joseph Conrad
24. Tess of the d’Urvervilles Thomas Hard
25. The Scarlet Letter Nathaniel Hawthorme
26. A Tale of Two Cities Charles Dickens
27. Frankenstein Mary Shelley
28. Animal Farm George Orwell
29. Jane Eyre Charlotte Bronte
30. The Grapes of Wrath John Steinbeck
31. The Old Man and the Sea Ernest Hemingway
32. The Trial Franz Kafka
33. The Red and the Black Standhal
34. Lotlita Vladimir Nabokov
35. The Ambassadors Henry James
36. Beloved Toni Morrison
37. Emma Jane Austen
38. Moby Dick Herman Mellville
39. The Golden Notebook Dois Lessing
40. The Tale of Genji Shikibu Muraskai
41. Things Fall Apart Chinua Achebe
42. Les Miseralbes Victor Hugo
43. Madame Bovary Gustave Flaubert
44. Anna Karenina Leo Tolstoy
45. Fathers and Sons Ivan Turgenev
46. Dead Souls Nikolai Gogol
47. One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest Ken Kesey
48. Oliver Twisr Charles Dickens
49. Uncle Tom’s Cabin Harriet Becher Stowe
50. Tilogoy: Molloy Malone Dies, The Unnamable Samuel Beckett
51. The Sun Also Rises Ernest Hemingway
52. Heart of Darkness Joseph Conrad
53. The Man Without Qualiies Robert Musil
54. On the Road Jack Kerouac
55. Honorable Mention (Books I’ve already read that were on at least one list, but I think they should be on the list) A Brave New World Aldous Huxley, My Antonia Willa Cather, Lord of the Flies William Golding, Kite Runner Kaleid Houssien, Poisonwood Bible Barbra Kingsolver, To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee, and Of Mice and Men John Steinbeck)