I have mentioned this before when talking about the recent YA Summit, but the best part is always the people. Always. Everyone had the opportunity to renew connections, start new projects, and meet new friends. One of my new friends is Diane Scrofano. I didn't know Diane at all, she submitted a dynamite proposal and few months later she is teaching all of us at the event about Hamilton and how YA literature is connected to this cultural phenomenon. Even more interesting, Diane had a chance to meet Kia Richmond. Low and behold, Kia has been quoting some of Diane's work on YA and mental illness for her new book. A new friendship, mutual academic respect, and, who knows, a future collaboration might be down the road.

​See Kia's previous work for the blog here.  Her blog post was entitled Language and Symptoms of Mental Illness in Young Adult Literature.
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Both Kia and Diane have provided handouts and pdfs of their PowerPoint presentation during the summit (Find them on the summit page) They did excellent work and inspired many teachers. You will want to check out their work.

For now, however, I turn to Diane to give us an introduction to Melissa de la Cruz's YA works related to Hamilton.

It began, as so many things do for women my age (40), at Target. The pink cover with the big heart practically steered my cart right over to the YA fiction aisle. I had already been planning to teach Hamilton: An American Musical in my fall 2017 Introduction to Literature class (thanks for making the music and lyrics all free on Genius.com, Lin-Manuel Miranda!) at Moorpark College in southern California. We had just selected it as our campus’ common reading selection, and I quickly concluded that I could use Alex and Eliza in conjunction with the musical in the spring of 2018 when I would teach that same introduction to literature class as a lower-division young adult literature course in collaboration with the local CSU’s upper-division YA literature class. While I probably could’ve just stuck with the musical, as it is much beloved by adolescents (one of my fall students got a “Rise Up” tattoo with the show’s iconic star image on her eighteenth birthday), I wanted to add Alex and Eliza because it was specifically marketed as YA (and written by a well-known YA author, Melissa De La Cruz—Disney Descendants, Summer on East End, and Blue Bloods series) and because I thought the novel’s focus on Eliza 

​Sure enough, gender considerations provided us with some of our richest conversations on the novel. One of my best students mentioned right off the bat that it was a bit embarrassing to carry around this big, pink, heart book. I reminded him that one benefit of a hardback is that the book jacket is removable, but of course the bigger question is why, in this day and age, is it still embarrassing for boys to carry around girl stuff but not for girls to carry around masculine-looking material? “Suck it up,” I exclaimed, feigning frustration, “We women have been carrying around your manly war books for decades!” Even so, as we continued to study the book, I caught myself playing into the same stereotypes as my students. I would down-play, smile, or joke about the “lovey-dovey” parts of the romance in a way that I wouldn’t for any other genre fiction.

​We all noted that we wouldn’t be as dismissive or ashamed to admit we liked mysteries, for example, in the same way as romances. Sometimes sci-fi and fantasy genre fiction gets put-down, but that’s for geekiness, not girliness. I felt often on the defensive, reiterating to my students that we were doing scholarly study of this book, not just reading “hot trash,” as that same high-achieving student called it. “Yes, I know this is silly,” I seemed to say, “but we are looking at its cultural significance!” But then I would recollect myself, and I would challenge the students: Why should romance be deemed more trivial than any other part of life? Or family and personal life? (Perhaps it’s time to revisit “The Personal Is Political.”) One student objected to the main conflict in the novel, which was Eliza’s needing to be rescued from an unappealing arranged marriage, not only because it was historically untrue but also because “History is exciting…just imagine a line of six pound cannons firing or a cavalry charge cutting down fleeing infantry. Exciting and badass things were happening back then.” In other words, why focus on mushy love stuff when you could write about cannon fire? War and politics—those things, not love, are the stuff of interesting stories. I remember hastily scrawling in the margins, “Don’t you think your idea of what’s exciting is gendered?” 

​Most students, not just this one, were disappointed to learn that, although Henry Livingston was a real person who existed in history, he was never engaged to Elizabeth Schuyler and that she never needed Alexander Hamilton to rescue her from a sexual assault by this very Livingston. In response to the climax of the story being fictionalized, the student above thought this too much a departure from the facts: “the premise for the major conflict in the story [is] completely false and untrue.” Others expressed similar disappointment. I asked students if De La Cruz should’ve included a table or author’s note at the end to specify which parts were true and which were made up. Perhaps others have offered up the same concern; De la Cruz does provide a brief author’s note in the second book in the to-be three-volume series, Love and War, which was just released last month (April 2018). After I read the novel, I ran to my colleague in the history department to check on some facts myself. In short, we were all stuck on what Joanne Brown calls “the problem of truth” and “the problem of accuracy” in her section headings in “Historical Fiction or Fictionalized History? Problems for Writers of Historical Novels for Young Adults,” a 1998 ALAN Review article that gave my students and I a helpful overview of common concerns and issues that could help us evaluate Alex and Eliza as a piece of historical fiction.  

As for the facts that I checked on with my colleague, Moorpark College History Professor Susan Kinkella, there is no evidence that Elizabeth Schuyler inoculated Revolutionary War soldiers for smallpox, but Abigail Adams did, so it’s realistic for women of that era. The novel also depicts Eliza as part of the homespun cloth movement of the era and as someone who sewed uniforms and visited wounded soldiers. While we don’t know for sure if she did these things, they’re not out of the realm of possibility, especially considering that her father, General Philip Schuyler, brought her to a major negotiation with the Iroquois Nation when she was only a pre-teen (thanks for that tid-bit, Susan!). For more about Eliza and what we do and don’t know, you can watch Susan’s half (the first half) of the talk (Eliza: Historical and Literary Representations of Hamilton’s Better Half) we gave on March 21, 2018, as part of women’s history month. 

In my half of the talk, I got back to the issue of why I chose the novel: it put the focus on Eliza. In the novel, she’s the protagonist. In the novel, we hear more from her point of view. In the novel, she’s more politically involved. That brought up the question as to whether the novel and the musical were feminist works of literature. What this really came down to, for my students and me, was how you define feminism. Was the novel more feminist because it depicted Eliza as more politically active early in her life than the musical did? As I said above, the novel has her inoculating soldiers, and later it also shows her awareness of the philosophical issues involved in breaking away from Britain. By contrast, in the musical, she’s “Helpless” and sings a clichéd love song mostly about Alexander’s eyes, though there is fleeting mention of his mind (Track 10). Though the musical shows Eliza excited about the American Revolution in Track 5 of Act 1 “Look around, look around at how / Lucky we are to be alive right now. History is happening in Manhattan…,” by Track 23, she is pleading with Alexander to come home and put family over career.  So, is it more feminist to depict a character breaking boundaries by getting involved in the traditionally male realm of politics, or is it more feminist to show a woman demanding that the patriarchal society pay attention to the historically female realm of home and family? Extrapolating from, and probably oversimplifying the difference between American feminism and French feminism, I tell my students: American feminism has emphasized the ability of women to do traditionally male things, while French feminism, by contrast, seeks to bring women’s experiences such as women’s experiences of sex and motherhood to the forefront of the culture. In short, must a woman act like a man to be feminist? 

It would seem so if you read some feminist critiques of the musical: In a New Yorker article, Michael Schulman looks at the large part that Eliza played in preserving Hamilton’s legacy, which is emphasized at the end of the musical: “Is it a feminist ending? Almost. The notion that men do the deeds and the women tell their stories isn’t exactly Germaine Greer-worthy.” In Princeton’s Feminist Spectator, Stacy Wolf concludes that “In the end…the three women in the musical occupy the most conventional and stereotypical roles [of women]—muse, wife, whore—which is all the more troubling since Hamilton goes such a long way to dismantle stereotypes of race and masculinity.” After the talk, a student audience member asked me if a piece of historical fiction could be feminist only if it portrayed women as being more politically active than they likely would’ve really been at the time. In other words, would feminist historical fiction necessarily have to be factually inaccurate? Could a piece showing a woman in what Wolf calls a “conventional” role ever be considered feminist? 

​Like a good professor, I deflected the question back to him to determine for himself. But I think that it all comes down to how one defines feminism. Depictions of women doing non-traditional things is not the only type of feminism. When Eliza advocates for home and family, this is feminist in the French sense, I would argue. Another project of feminist literary criticism is to seek out voices that have been silenced, so to attempt to write a book from Eliza’s perspective when in life we have none of her letters, is an attempt at resurrecting her voice. In the musical, Lin-Manuel Miranda’s “Burn” (Track 38) gives Eliza license to express anger about the Reynolds affair, which she could never have done publicly in the historical period she lived in. However, when we try to fictionally reconstruct the story and point of view of those whose historical voices have been lost, we run the risk of anachronistically imposing our own worldviews on people from past times. Joanne Brown explains in the section “The Problem of Accuracy,” that “Some critics have insisted that historical fiction reveals more about its author than its historical subject, or as Henry Seidel Canby has said, historical fiction is ‘more likely to register an exact truth about the writer’s present than the exact truth of the past.’”

​The most troublesome issue with writing historical fiction, whether it’s a musical or a YA novel, of course is how to cover race and slavery. Despite its status as beloved by a modern, liberal audience, Hamilton the musical has received criticism in this regard. To get the gist of such criticism, I recommended that my students read a Slate interview with historiographer Lyra Monteiro. Basically, some of the criticisms of the musical are these: you can have people of color play the Founding Fathers, but the Founding Fathers really weren’t people of color; they were white and their status as slaveholders is largely disregarded by the musical while the stories of actual people of color who lived during Revolutionary times remain unknown. (For a young readers’ series that fictionally explores the lives of African Americans during the Revolutionary War, see Laurie Halse Anderson’s Seeds of America trilogy, including Chains, Forge, and Ashes! In fact, on her website, Anderson provides a list correlating chapters of these books to various songs from Hamilton: An American Musical!) In addition, I tell my students that many historians regard Hamilton as an elitist; he didn’t want Washington to step down and many worried that Hamilton’s views would lead to a continuation of the monarchy. While the musical depicts Hamilton as the common man who came up from nothing, Jefferson advocated for the small farmers of the early U.S. while Hamilton could be seen as the creator of the Wall Street one percent. The musical as well as the novel present Alexander as despising slavery, yet students should know that, while there is no evidence that Alex and Eliza owned slaves, Ankeet Ball, on the Columbia University and Slavery website, describes Hamilton as advocating against slavery only when it was convenient for him career-wise.  

​The novel Alex and Eliza, too, is problematic in its treatment of slavery. With Alex and Eliza set while she was still single and living in her parents’ house, there are mention of “servants,” but not of “slaves,” presumably to reflect the fact that Philip Schuyler called his slaves “servants,” according to the Schuyler Mansion Historical Society.  However, what does this lead young readers to think? If they don’t know that Philip Schuyler (as did most other wealthy New Yorkers at the time) owned slaves, why wouldn’t they picture white servants? Especially troubling is the line, spoken by Eliza, declaring that “We Schuylers have always, always espoused a belief in the equality of black and white souls” (178). At this point in the novel, Alex is asking Eliza if she supports the abolition movement. I’m surprised that De La Cruz has Eliza respond not about herself merely but about the whole family and suggest that they have historically been abolitionist. The only reference I could find to the color of the “servants” in the whole book was in a sentence in which guests to Eliza’s Aunt Gertrude’s house “dump” their hats and coats “into the servant girl’s thin brown arms” (169). One might expect more of De La Cruz, a Filipina immigrant, herself a woman of color, but perhaps the issue is with the publisher, Putnam, sweeping the issue under the rug, as mainstream media has often done. In any case, Joanne Brown’s criteria for evaluating historical fiction can be brought up again: “Strict adherence to historical accuracy can pose a problem if ‘accuracy’ involves brutal or immoral behavior. What are the writer’s options when the intended readers are young adults, an audience for whom some readers may desire a subdued version of historical events?” A good question for students is who are the “some readers” who want a “subdued version” of history and why? Who does that “subdued” version protect? Who does that “subdued” version of history erase? 

​By the time the unit was over, my student who complained about the book cover did concede that this book was more than just a “cash grab” riding the coattails of the musical’s success. Since it brings up  all these issues to discuss, I would agree. I’m eager to read Love and War.

Anderson, Laurie Halse. “Connect with the Hamilton Musical!” Laurie Halse Anderson.   http://madwomanintheforest.com/hamilton/.

Ball, Ankeet. “Ambition and Bondage: An Inquiry on Alexander Hamilton and Slavery.” Columbia University and Slavery. Columbia University. Retrieved from https://columbiaandslavery.columbia.edu/content/ambition-bondage-inquiry-alexander-hamilton-and-slavery

Brown, Joanne. (1998). "Historical Fiction or Fictionalized History? Problems for Writers of Historical Novels for Young Adults." The ALAN Review, Vol. 26, No. 1. Retrieved from https://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/ALAN/fall98/brown.html

De La Cruz, Melissa. (2017). Alex and Eliza: A Love Story. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons.
——. (2018). Love and War: An Alex and Eliza Story. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons.

Funiciello, Danielle.  (5 Jun 2016). “An Overview of Slave Trade in New Netherland, New York and Schuyler Mansion.” Schuyler Mansion State Historic Site. Retrieved from http://schuylermansion.blogspot.com/2016/06/an-overview-of-slave-trade-in-new.html

Hanisch, Carol. (1970). “The Personal Is Political.” Retrieved from http://www.carolhanisch.org/CHwritings/PIP.html
Kinkella, Susan and Diane Scrofano. (21 Mar. 2018). “Eliza: Historical and Literary Representations of Hamilton’s Better Half.” Moorpark College. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wS7K8ooUR_A&feature=share
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Miranda, Lin-Manuel. (25 Sept. 2015). Hamilton: Original Broadway Cast Recording. Genius. Retrieved from https://genius.com/albums/Original-broadway-cast-of-hamilton/Hamilton-original-broadway-cast-recording
Onion, Rebecca. (5 Apr. 2016). “A Hamilton Skeptic on Why the Play Isn’t as Revolutionary As It Seems.” Slate. Retrieved from http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2016/04/a_hamilton_critic_on_why_the_musical_isn_t_so_revolutionary.html
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Wolf, Stacy. (24 Feb. 2016). “Hamilton.” The Feminist Spectator. Princeton University. Retrieved from http://feministspectator.princeton.edu/2016/02/24/hamilton/

You can contact Diane at: dscrofano@vcccd.edu

​Until next week.

I hope Rachelle and Julia don't mind. We just finished the 2018 Summit on the Research and Teaching of Young Adult Literature. So many great things happened. Ideas from a variety of perspectives where shared. People renewed old friendships and new friendships were established. There are new plans for research, book ideas, white papers and some new ideas about using this literature in the classroom. More of that will be laid out in the weeks and months to come. We are making plans for some follow-up events here in Las Vegas and in Clark County School District. People are planning on how to reconnect at NCTE in November. All who were in attendance are looking forward to sharing. 

We were lucky that Noah Schaffer was in attendance. He has experience snapping pictures at several ALAN Workshops. Below we have a visual taste of the people and events form the first day of the summit-- all of the photographers belong were taken by Noah. Browse through these a bit. After that, read what Kate and Julia have to say about Hot Button issues and YA. This was certainly a topic of conversation in several sessions. Let's consider what Kate and Julia have to say as a post summit extension.   

Rachelle Savitz is an assistant professor of adolescent literacy and previously a secondary literacy interventionist. Julia Kate Bentley is currently a PhD student studying early literacy with a children’s literature emphasis. Both authors are lifelong readers, passionate about advocating use of children’s and young adult literature in all classrooms as they are not only complex texts but discuss myriad of tough topics, such as culture, race, sexual identity, and immigration. 

Challenging our own thinking as educators and creating student agency and voice for all individuals is a goal of education. We want our students to value individuality and get involved in civil engagement to better their lives and that of others. However, teachers tend to avoid certain topics due to fear or lack of knowledge. Good novels push against barriers and challenge the ‘norm’ by valuing the differences of all individuals.
 
Immigration rights, DACA, Dreamer status, and ICE raids are consistently in the news, and being talked about across the country. Students are experiencing the devastation of families being yanked apart either through watching the news or experiencing it first-hand through friends, family, or personal situations. We have bared witness to children being pulled from loved one’s arms and being sent back to countries that have not been visited in many years, if ever. Protests for and against immigration are happening throughout the country, with both sides not standing down. Fake news continues to purport misleading, and often incorrect information regarding various cultures and people attempting to enter the US.
 
At the same time, we watch as funding is pulled from LGBTQ safe zones and organizations, same-sex couples must fight for their rights of equality, and states propose laws that do not condemn bullying of students that differ from the norm in regard to sexual identity. Students are left to question and wonder about their own feelings alone without a safe forum for open discussion.
 
The devastation happening to our own students and students across the country is evident, yet many teachers are worried to begin open discussions, not knowing how to address certain topics or questions that may come. As a culture, when we do not understand something, misunderstandings flourish, often leading to negative stereotypes and even hateful acts. Our students need guidance from trusted adults to distinguish fact from opinion and access accurate information from all sides. They want to ask questions. They seek understanding. Terry Farish and Sara Farizan provide a way “in” for opening up dialogue relating to the Muslim culture, war, immigration, and sexual identity. 

Viola’s mother, Tereza, accepts the need to escape, without her older, frail mother. The journey is long and tumultuous, as they narrowly escape and must walk miles and miles only to face a long wait in Cairo. For two years in Cairo, Viola finds herself standing in long lines, filling out forms over and over, working, and waiting for the blue card that will provide permission to travel to the United States. During this time, Tereza is incapacitated by grief brought on by the loss of her son, forcing Viola to act as the adult. She teaches herself English as she knows she will need it when arriving in America.
 
Once again, upon arriving in America, Viola and her mother are torn between two worlds, as they attempt to understand American culture and laws while also keeping to their Sudanese roots. Viola is confused by new freedoms, such as wearing clothing that does not cover her arms and legs and the fact that she may attend school. Teresa struggles to understand how to raise Viola, as her punishment of burning Viola’s hand for spending time alone with a boy is not acceptable in America like it was in Sudan. Grief, loss of innocence, death, need for community and belonging, and survival, are tragically, yet elegantly depicted throughout the novel as Viola and Tereza discover their new identities as both, American and Sudanese. 

Sahar questions governmental laws and officials by bringing to light the hypocrisy and irony of various laws. For instance, women are to need protection yet also to fear the police. Or, that it is okay to accept being born the wrong gender and having a government funded gender reassignment surgery. However, it is a death sentence to be attracted to someone of the same sex, such as the hanging of two boys or when Sahar’s cousin was arrested, tortured, and beaten for being gay.  Unable to turn to her father, Baba, emotionally unavailable due to her mother's death, Sahar must struggle alone with her questions and feelings. When she meets a group who have benefitted from gender reassignment and affirm the government’s position that homosexuality is a mental illness, she believes undergoing the surgery could be the answer to "fix" her desires.
 
When Nasrin’s mother arranges her marriage Sahar again questions what to do and who she is. She agonizes over Nasrin’s decision to walk away from their love and questions her own options. At the wedding, Nasrin’s mother makes it clear that Sahar should forget the love formed and move on. After months of little communication, Nasrin’s husband sees how depressed she is and invites Sahar over. However, he makes it clear that Sahar must behave appropriately and respect his home and marriage.
 
Ultimately, Sahar accepts and understands that she is not a man trapped in a woman’s body and is at peace with understanding who she is. Sahar and her father learn how to grieve and let go. Baba returns to work and Sahar returns to school, where she meets another female student Taraneh. The power of friendship, hope for those facing challenges alone, and moving from grief to love are captured throughout this beautiful novel as we learn to understand Sahar as an individual, not Sahar as a lesbian or Muslim.
 
Understanding Sahar’s world provides an inside view into the isolation, alienation, bullying, guilt, shame, tension, acceptance, and perseverance that she faced personally and due to others. There is no universal experience for students that identify as LGBTQ, as is shown by the characters in this novel. Farizan disrupts what is considered “normal” in respect to sexuality and gender. 

​As educators, it is our responsibility to provide the means for our students to push against boundaries, question everything, and enhance their knowledge and acceptance of diversity in this world. We must become okay with being ‘uncomfortable’. These books, and others similar, demonstrate how people of the same age, regardless of where they are from, have commonalities with fears, desires, dreams, and goals while also struggling in their own unique ways. We must show, not just state, that we value individuality. 

Wow! It has been nearly a year of planning for this event. Let's  get one thing clear, it isn't happening because of me. 

Early planning happened at the CEE Conference in Columbus at the Ohio State. A ton of people weighed in on the planning and purpose of the Summit.  The early committee was Michelle Falter, Gretchen Rumohr-Voskuil, Crag Hill, Sarah Donovan, and myself.  Everyone contributed a great deal. As life goes, Michelle and Gretchen have had important--not tragic--family and life issues that had them going in different directions during the summit. They will be missed. While Michelle and Gretchen were still working hard we added a local librarian, Susan Slykerman, and we asked Bill Konigsberg to weigh in from an authors perspective from time to time. Both have  added tremendously to what will be happening this Thursday, Friday, and Saturday June 14-16, 2018. 

Susan helped us make the needed connection with Clark County School District they helped us create one of our a valuable partnerships. Bill helped us think about things from the point of view of the author. As we discuss teaching and research, we want authors to understand what we do and we need to better understand their work. What is their role in the classroom, in the conferences, and in the publishing industry?  We often don't think about how difficult it is for them to be a full time writer and to make economic ends meet. I appreciate Donalyn Miller's constant reminder to buy their books.

Other partnerships include the UNLV College of Education--we go nowhere without Sheila and Kelsy, the UNLV Department of Teaching and Learning, the UNLV Teacher Development & Resources Library--Yeah Amanda, Katherine and Huston, The Southern Nevada Writing Project--Thanks Denise, Ben, and Amber, and the Gayle A. Zeiter Literacy Development Center. A special shout out to the UNLV Lied Library for providing such a wonderful space for Thursday and Friday and to Valley High School for doing the same on Saturday. 

So, the time has arrived. About 40 people have prepared presentations. There is a link to the program on this page.

We developed a quick questionnaire so that many of you who can't be here, could weigh in with your opinions. It isn't to late to do it now. 

We will hear presentations on Thursday and construct an EduCamp format on Friday. We are going to learn from each other. We will struggle to understand, to define, and plan for a new era of research and teaching of YA literature that is  vibrant. The field has so many quality authors that I can't even begin to start naming names, but you might browse through the blog and see who the contributors and I have highlighted over the last three years. Take a look at the weekend picks. 

What, you aren't able to be here. Don't worry we want to hear from you follow #YASummit2018 and #YACritical and make comments and share ideas. Look at the list of presenters, you are bound to know one of them, and send them an email. If you don't know them, that is okay, they are all nice people. Just email somebody.

Our registration  is over 150 people and thank goodness we are starting to look like the summit might break even after all the costs. If you want to donate to help the cause, just register and tell me you are not coming and we will save the money.

We get to hear from four keynote authors along the way: Laurie Halse Anderson, who understood what we wanted to do from the beginning and has lent her unfailing support. Chris Crutcher, who says he owes me --which could never be true since I owe him a great debt from the first time I read Running Loose. Kekla Magoon, for being willing to trust some academic she did know at all. How it Went Down still chills me to the bone every time I think about it. Bill Konigsberg, whose kindness and unflinching honesty in his books and in his life are an enduring example to stay in there and do good work.

Who wouldn't what to hear them talk about their work and their take on the field of YA literature?

In addition, 8 other authors will be attending, presenting, talking with participants, and weighing in with there ideas and expertise. Please check them out on the summit page and buy there books.

Don't for get to follow along and starting to night get ready to follow #YASummit2018 and #YACritcal.

More updates soon.

Today, we have one of our old friends posting again. About a year and a half ago, Anne Cramer suggested a post about YA and Shakespeare. I thought it was a great idea. She produced it and it remains one of my favorites. Especially, when I talk with teachers who think that YA isn't sophisticated or useful in the curriculum. You can find it here. This time Anne discusses YA and science fiction. 

​When I first began writing this blog post, I wanted to highlight exploring content areas in the English Language Arts classroom through the use of science fiction texts. Trilogies like His Dark Materials and The Hunger Games worked as a springboard in my middle school classroom to engage even the most reluctant researchers in a quest to uncover the scientific reality governing the multiple dimensions of Philip Pullman’s Oxfords as well as the creation of genetic hybrids like Suzanne Collins’  tracker jackers. The right text can create fire where there was barely a spark. 

What was at first a battle slowly became a part of the classroom culture. By viewing the future through a particular lens, my classroom began to discuss important moral and ethical questions such as the aftermath of cloning and genetic engineering. This framework also created a natural interest in learning the proper ways to research and write up results, formulating opinion pieces, preparing for debates, and other ELA content areas. Together, we created a classroom community of inquiry and investigation while also meeting a great deal of content standards.

This exploration created free-thinkers interested in fact checking. My students became connoisseurs of exploring speculative fiction that carried current scientific theory into the future.  They followed Merriam-Webster's’ definition of science fiction as “fiction dealing principally with the impact of actual or imagined science on society or individuals or having a scientific factor as an essential orienting component”. (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/science%20fiction).   
 
From this pursuit, my classroom generated a list of titles they felt would allow educators and librarians to engage students in scientific endeavors while also creating a myriad of exploration of cross-curricular themes and academic pursuits . 

Science fiction forces the reader to examine his or her role in the future. The author of The Carbon Diaries, Saci Lloyd, said in an interview that science fiction is the “The best lens for examining contemporary society”. While my students generated the list above, many of the books did not reflect the future being created in the here and now, the one reflected in a multitude of news outlets.  Lloyd touches on the role of political and ecological refugees seeking asylum in her novels, a small and poignant piece of her larger narrative. Each of the novels above touches on one aspect of culture and color but none are written directly from the perspective of a person of color. 

Many of today’s science fiction novels paint a monochromatic future, (see The Future Is Pale: Race in Contemporary Young Adult Dystopian Novels By Mary J. Couzelis) There tends to be a lack of cultural and racial identity in the characters in the novels. Our students need to see themselves in our future or have the platform to explore how, in the future constructed in many science fiction novels, race has been extinguished and cultures whitewashed in order to achieve a perfect world.  The Marrow Thieves, The Giver, and Parable of the Sower provide three opportunities to explore not only the science behind science fiction but also tap into the diversity of science fiction characters and novelists. The three books create a framework to discuss how the need for a “perfect” world erases different cultures and communities in order to achieve some semblance of salvation. 

​Indigenous writer Cherie Dimaline The Marrow Thieves and Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower create dystopian futures where climate change has created chaos due to resource scarcity and poverty. Moreover, the race of the characters plays an important factor in their future: white is good, everything else is bad. The authors address these in different ways. The books highlight many of the themes touched upon in The Critical Merits of Young Adult Literature: Coming of Age and our students can use the lens of science fiction to examine contemporary society by comparing current social, political, and scientific trends to these timeless texts. 

Dimaline and Butler are also not afraid to introduce a wide variety of characters that are usually sidelined in mainstream science fiction (note I use mainstream- there are many other examples in the genre that break the mold). One of the great and tragic love stories in The Marrow Thieves is Miigwans’s loss of his husband Issac to recruiters, a story that echoes the relocation of indigenous people to American Indian Schools for cultural assimilation.  Butler’s creation of a black female science fiction protagonist in Lauren Olamina (especially when looking at the publication date of the novel) is as revolutionary as Lauren Olamina’s actions. Butler also broke through racial and gender boundaries with her presence in the science fiction world. She remains the only science fiction writer to ever become a MacArthur fellow. Dimaline is the first Aboriginal writer in residence for the Toronto Public Library. 

​There is no shying away from the attempts to whitewash the future in these texts. The bittersweet introduction to The Marrow Thieves instantly alerts the reader that the genocidal mistakes of our past are being repeated in the future as the main character, Frenchie, and his new family try to save the oral history tradition and rituals of their respective tribes. They are at the edge of extinction and desperately clinging to their community. Lauren Olamina and her family are barely managing an existence in walled-off community, Robledo, California. They are trapped inside for safety reasons but, at the same time, are slowly dying of poverty and lack of opportunity.  The only way out is to sell themselves to a company, a comparison to slavery that many students will not miss. 

The community and culture of our schools is changing. Through exploring the role of community in these unique texts, we can promote not only the science concepts inside the novels but also to make sure that we address the importance of community as well the silencing of the voices of any racial group, economic faction, or sexual orientation. These three novels are a unique insight into the role of interconnectedness, a force that no matter how old civilization becomes, continues to drive our youth to seek each other out and form community. While the definition of community changes from each novel, the main characters intrinsically find themselves hurtling towards each other with a force as strong as gravity.

These diverse texts show us that the answer to many of our dystopian problems are not solved by one hero or even science but through true leadership that utilizes delegation of authority and makes  space for those who do not fit the conventional molds of the future.  These science fiction novels that paint a diverse landscape for our students to identify with also make sure to create communities of acceptance, something that many of our students long for.
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The true horror of our future in these three novels is not what science creates or the scientists that wield the power. No, the true horror lies in what humanity creates in the name of protection while hiding behind a mask of fear: the breakdown of community. The ritualistic and thought-out plans to dismember the foundation of civilizations by destroying art, music, culture, language, and love. The humanities ground the communities in these science fiction novels. Community as revolution is something that our students see reflected in current social and political movements and even better, like the protagonists in these three novels, these movements are headed by teens who are refusing to accept the answers that society is dealing them. They are hurtling together through tiny hand-held devices to lead us to a brighter and safer future for generations to come. 

Bibliography
 
Butler, O. E. (1995).Parable of the sower. London: The Women's Press.
Dimaline, C. (2017). The Marrow Thieves. Toronto : Cormorant Books
Lowry, L. (1993).The giver. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Until next week.

It is time for another special Friday Edition of Dr. Bickmore's YA Wednesday. Leave it to Bryan Ripley Crandall to point me to exciting people and ideas. Bryan has contributed before. I asked in to weigh in about immigration and you can find his post here. It was Bryan who introduced me to Kwame Alexander, before everyone new about Kwame. Thanks Bryan. This time he has introduced me to Jayne Penn and I am already a fan. I hope to run into her at a conference.  

Roxas (2008) writes that an increase of diversity in student populations and a “lack of diversity in teachers and teacher educators is contributing to an ever-increasing divide between what students need in schools and what schools can currently provide” (2). Having experienced what it feels like to be the only Black student or Black teacher in multiple institutions it is clear to me that I am likely a representation of a demographic that many of my students rarely encounter.  My pedagogy and advocacy for literacy has shifted drastically as a result, including how I am currently exploring young adult literature to pair with more traditional texts encouraged and expected by my school’s curriculum.
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My moral identity results from societal influences and, as a result, I incorporate ideas of institutional and cultural socialization in my preparation and teaching processes. These ideas include the vision I carry forth for teaching empathy. Harro (2000) writes, “our socialization sources are rapidly multiplied based on how many institutions with which we have contact” (p. 18). Such socialization has been true for me, too, where the beliefs I hold have been influenced from traditional Baptist Christian practices to liberal compasses that provided throughout my education. Transitioning in the role of a teacher in different states, both educationally and professionally, has helped me to mold my moral compass in different ways, which is something I express with my students. Exploring empathy encourages my students to grow as individuals for themselves. Banks and Banks (2009) also help me to realize that similar to how I was influenced by my environments, so it will be for students. In their words, “schools are also cultural sites and teachers are themselves cultural beings” (p. 37). As a result, I am aware of the effect I have on my students’ cultural assimilations, and I try my best to be a resource for them. This includes the literature I introduce them to and the multicultural perspectives I want them to appreciate, not only in their high school experience but throughout their lives.

​An overarching mission for my school is to help young men to develop holistically. In order to do so, I’ve had to be creative in my methods, especially because my cultural background and gender differs from the vast majority of youth who attend the school. In a high school where 98% of the student body are athletes, however, it was not difficult to find a link to connect literacy education with their personal experiences and my own. I, too, am an athlete. Appleman writes (2009):

​I speculated that sports stories might be the way to expose my students to cultures and backgrounds different from their own and to make the connection between their worlds and the worlds lived by others. I took a tip from Gay, G. (2002) to build, “Pedagogical bridges that connect prior knowledge with new knowledge, the known with the unknown, and abstractions with lived realities,” and began to develop “rich repertoires of multicultural instructional examples” (p. 113) to promote diverse reading experiences. My high school, with a 20% minority student population, encouraged me to develop more inclusivity in my curriculum and to represent multiple perspectives. Sports stories, I have found, unite the stories of my students. Similar to what Brown wrote in  “When Sports and Literacy Collide” (2014) and “Sports Talk, Free Snacks, Good Books: The Paisley Sports Literacy Program” (2018), tapping sports in literacy instruction allows educators to provide intellectual links within knowledge gaps. Many students positively to athletic narratives and stories. An athletic lens, then, especially in relation to teaching empathy, provides a way to diversify the reading experiences of my classroom.

A primary objective at the Jesuit high school where I teach is to motivate young men to appreciate and enjoy the literary experience. A few years ago, I began to employ theme-based objectives for each of my units-of-instruction and Empathy was chosen as one of the themes. Teaching empathy became a tool to help students to relate to things they did not know or were unfamiliar with.  I brought the theme of empathy to my sophomore year curriculum where students also explored the hero in moral conflict. The books chosen for the curriculum during this year also depicted characters dealing with ethical dilemmas.
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 With the goal to mix-up the curriculum so that it was more diverse, I added August Wilson’s play, Fences. Fences encompasses qualities in a story that I desired: sports, race issues, family issues, personal growth challenges, the journey into manhood, ethics, conflict, etc. It also offered a location to discuss empathy. Fences explores the conflicts within a male protagonist, Troy Maxon, and his effect on family and friends. As a former baseball player in the Negro Leagues who was rejected from being integrating into Major League Baseball, Troy blocks his son’s, Cory, opportunity to play college football. The play serves as a vehicle to dig into Troy’s history and to question the choices he makes throughout the book.  Troy’s decisions throughout the script make it hard to like him yet learning his past helps to understand that his flaws make him the individual that he is.  As a way to be most effective in reaching goals with my students, I designed a class project to help them better understand empathy.  

In chapter one of Multicultural Education, in reference to Nieto and Bode (2008) and Sleeter and Grant (2007), Banks (2009) explains there needs to be a “school reform effort designed to increase educational equity for a range of cultural, ethnic, and economic groups” (7). This includes finding texts that explain background information on stereotyped persons (i.e. athletes and people of color). Therefore, not only was I able to help students connect to the play, I was able to expose them to experiences different from their own, and to provide a narrative that minority students could see themselves in.   In order to reach more students, I realized that some of my non-majority students needed to be represented in the texts used in class.
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I named the project The Athlete Narrative, a project that requires students to choose one athlete they respect but know very little about. While reading Fences, they research and write a report on that athlete’s experiences, explain their journey, and look critically at the athletic careers, including the many communities that help make them the individuals they are. Jesuit schools like mine encourage students to be men and women for others, and I wanted my students to see themselves as individuals who are also influenced by larger communities: families, neighborhoods, regions, friends, histories, etc. I wanted them to see that characters in the stories we read are also impacted by the societies that make them who they are. 

The Athlete Narrative helps students to understand that athletes are human beings, too, and not just idol figures. Every person has a story and that story shapes who they are. Hoops4Hope, a global non-profit that encourages life-skills for student athletes, calls this Ubuntu – a S. African philosophy of togetherness. That is, a person is a person because of other people. The same is true for athletes, and I wanted my students to see that like characters in the books we read, we are influenced by the communities we belong to. An athlete is an athlete because of the fellowship of athletes. The same is true for readers. The Athlete Narrative is the springboard for reading and analyzing Fences and it builds context for how students view the challenges the main characters present. Further, because Fences is a play written about an African-American family, it provides a location for me to share my own story as a Division I track athlete and the obstacles I faced.
As the young men work through the play, too, I supplement reading materials that expose them to a wider understanding of athleticism, including:
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• Darkness Unto Light: Kris Dunn’s path to stardom at Providence
• Undaunted by grim prognosis, college softball star vows to return to field
• Reborn and revived: Marines vet Hank Goff rediscovers joy through football
• New York Liberty star Tina Charles determined to help her community

 
Reading such news stories brings a richer understanding to Wilson’s play, as well provides additional angles to teach empathy. The work aso enables students to avoid preconceptions of people they do not know and provides a scaffold to students’ prior knowledge with new knowledge.  Using the theme of empathy has enabled my students to understand experiences different from theirs and, in turn, to see the humanity in people and not just occupations or labels.  My intention was not to trivialize ethnic cultures or the struggles they face; rather, I wanted to work through sports stories to challenge “stereotypes and misconceptions” (Banks, 1989) p. 17).

​Using empathy as a tool to help students connect with text makes the literary experience more valuable and effective. Students gain more from reading when they can relate to the text, and for this reason I’ve explored bringing young adult literature into the classroom, as well.  Students find success when the stories they read relate to the world around them. For these reasons, YA novels have tremendous potential to enhance The Athlete Narrative project and how my classes explore moral conflicts throughout the sophomore year.

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas. In The Hate U Give, the main character, Starr, is a high school basketball player dealing with several tragedies. Starr lives in the “ghetto” part of her city, attends a prep school where she is one of the two Black students in her grade level, and is a key witness to a police-shooting. Thomas’s story tracks Starr’s experiences of coping with the deaths of two of her best friends, one in a drive-by shooting and the other at the hands of a cop.  The book provides a great scope into the mind of a teenager, and shines light on relevant issues of modern society. Perhaps there is not a better book to teach empathy to high school students, particularly in a prep school! 
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The Hate U Give also does a fantastic job portraying Starr’s world as a prep student from the “ghetto” and what it is like to live separate lives: one as Williamson Prep Starr and the other as Garden Heights Starr. As she becomes the central witness of controversial police shooting of an unarmed black teen, she begins to unravel the identities she carries and struggles to keep Garden Heights Starr out of Williamson Prep, especially as the shooting gets nationwide attention. The Hate U Give has tremendous potential for teaching empathy.  Currently, the only novel offered to students with a black protagonist in the sophomore curriculum is The Bluest Eye, and that is a challenging text for my students. The Hate U Give would provide a modern, relevant story that would engage more of readers, whether at the beginning of the school year or at the end.   

​Dear Martin by Nic Stone. Dear Martin by Nic Stone is another text that would be relatable for my students during The Athletic Narrative and would serve as an alternative to Thomas’s The Hate U Give.  The main character, Justyce, would be relatable to many of my Black students, but also a character for opening perspectives for non-Black students, as well.  Although Justyce is not an athlete, his best friend Manny is – a player on the basketball team. Justyce struggles with his identity at a prep school in a way that Manny does not.  Because Justyce, like Starr, comes from a culture of poverty, he wrestles between the ‘hood’ and the Prep school life.  The story relates to athletic experiences, too, and the fact that Justyce is a great student about to attend an Ivy League university – and on the debate team –  brings a unique angle for breaking down barriers of identity, stereotypes, and cultural misconceptions.  Stone, with the way she wrote Dear Martin, offers a vehicle for discussing diversity that would allow me to bringing forth a theme of empathy even further.
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Cop-profiling and the killing of young Black men are relevant to the lives of young people today and on message with the current state of this country (e.g, Milwaukee’s Sterling Brown and experience as a Black male athlete). The book explores a sensitive and complicated topic and can be used to initiate class discussions within a theme of heroes and conflicts. At the same time it would my male readers to look at all sides of a complicated issue through an empathetical lens.

Iron Handcuffs by Chris Crutcher. Chris Crutcher’s book, Chinese Handcuffs, is another text that explores the lives and struggles of teen athletes that could pair well with The Athlete Narrative. Crutcher’s writing, along with his article, “Speaking My Mind: Sports Lit” (2014), introduces enlightening concepts for using sport’s literature to engage reading in students.  Chinese Handcuffs is paced as if characters are in a race. Crutcher writes with such intensity that it forces the reader to stay aware and engaged Aside from his storytelling skills, Crutcher includes compelling background stories of his main character and the late brother. He vividly details the actions of the characters while working out and competing, making the athletic story relatable and realistic.  Crutcher writes in a way that is designed to maintain the attention of a hyper-active student – it is fast paced, engaging, and believable. Additionally, the point Crutcher makes about treating writing as teamwork or corroboration between readers and writers – where both parties bring their best imaginations to the experience – parallels the life skills I also encourage.     

Similarly, in “Teaming Up: Teaching Analysis and Research through Sports Controversies,” Beckelhimer (2014) makes the argument that sports create controversy that, in turn, can initiate arguments, analysis, research, and context. Teachers can and should use sports to help their students learn rhetoric and analyze controversy. Beckelhimer also encourages the idea of expanding resource options for research, similar to how the Athlete Narrative requires my students to research background stories of professional athletes as a way to understand the reasoning behind the human behavior and to see athletes as humans, and not merely entertainers.  

​A Final Thought. Promoting sports narratives and stories, especially when they expose cultural differences with relatable characters, helps students to better interact with and appreciate the texts we teach. One of the struggles when working with adolescent boys is sparking their interests in reading. Using empathy as a tool has helped me to gain student interest in the texts chosen and pairing this theme with athletic narratives has kept the attention of the young men I teach.  Implementing sport’s related texts improves reading engagement, and the use of YA literature with athletic characters has tremendous promise.