Black Poetry Day

Friday, 21 Oct., 8pm, Engineering Building auditorium

speaking the characters' language

Chris Crutcher's talk at the library was jammed. The auditorium was full of students (junior high, high school), teachers, parents, librarians. Crutcher talked mostly about Whale Talk and gave its history: how he had to write the book twice because the first time, the plot centered on a high school shooting, but when Columbine and other shootings happened, he asked his agent to throw the book in the wastebasket. As he said, he was then character-rich and plot-poor. So he relied on his experiences as a teacher who coached a fledgling swim team composed of atypical athletes.

Crutcher talked about the scene in Whale Talk that got the book banned in Limestone County, the two pages in which Heidi, the 4 1/2 year old biracial girl, uses the "F" and "B" words in her therapy session. And Crutcher talked about the actual person the character is based on, a former client of his, from whom he got permission to tell the story in his novel. That client is now a college graduate.

Whale Talk

I'm getting angrier and angrier about the banning of Whale Talk in Limestone County. While I was researching banned book stuff yesterday, I read an article online in the Decatur Daily called Forbidden reading - Limestone County, like nation, seeing trend of book challenges. In March, 2005, Limestone County Board of Education banned the book from its libraries after a challenge was filed in November, 2004 by Christi Brooks, a parent at Ardmore High School.

I also printed out Chris Crutcher's letter To the Citizens of Limestone School District, and to the Board of Education, in which he talks about his books and others as a means to help kids sitting in the classroom. He says, "I worked full time as a therapist in the world of child abuse and neglect for fifteen years, and continue to do pro-bono work even today. I hear stories like these [like Heidi's story in Whale Talk] and stories far worse on a regular basis. I am struck by the fact that the kids I hear them from, populate our classroom. They do not tell their stories because many of them feel shame because they are treated that way, and they hold the secret; the only real power thay have over their situations." His books (and books by many other young adult writers like Judy Blume and Walter Dean Myers and Sharon Draper) are about reaching out to readers who often have little or not support in their own lives.

I'm not sure I'm making much sense, but I'm upset about the banning of Whale Talk, because I got it out of the library yesterday afternoon and read it. I already knew which passage supposedly caused the banning, so it was weird to read the novel up to pp. 68-69 and then read this one scene taken out of context. The scene in context is a powerful statement of how racism kills. I mean, there's this little girl - 4 1/2 yrs. old - whose mom is white and whose dad, a paralyzed football player who left Alicia and their daughter Felicia, is African American. The widowed mom then marries a racist character, and they have twin boys. The stepdad, Rich, changes Felicia's name to Heidi, because "it was the 'whitest' name Rich could think of."

Felicia/Heidi is in a therapy session with Georgia when the main character of Whale Talk, T.J. Jones, arrives at Georgia's home. T.J. is multiracial (Japanese-, African- and European- American) and adopted. He also went to Georgia for therapy when he was much younger. As T.J. enters Georgia's home, she asks him to into the therapy session and Felicia/Heidi decides that T.J. must play the bad dad role. Felicia/Heidi, the 4 1/2 year old, is the one who yells the racist obscenities that got the book banned -- but she's repeating the abuse her racist stepdad heaped on her.

Now, no question Whale Talk is about race. But the novel is complex: it's about outsiders, left-out kids, arrogance of pampered jocks, long-term atonement for accidental sins. Lots of meaty stuff going on in the novel. Whale Talk gets banned because of racism...but what does that mean? Racist language is used to depict how racist beliefs maim others. The novel is fiercely anti-racist. So why does it get banned? I wonder if most of the novels banned on the basis of race actually are anti-racist books and the folks who challenged them actually were against the anti-racist stance and hid behind the offensive language as a way to get the books off the shelves. I mean, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Maya Angelou all have books on the banned books list.

I've written enough. The Decatur Daily article said that when Limestone County banned Whale Talk, Crutcher donated five copies of his novel to the Athens-Limestone Public Library. So Limestone County schools might not have this excellent novel on its shelves, but readers can still find the book in the public library.

Robbie's perspective

Man, I thought I'd never get my legs out of that windshield, but all of a sudden, I was free and looking down at my shiny new Nikes Mom and Pop had just bought me and everything else, including my seventeen-year old body, going up in flames. I don't remember what that felt like. Must have blocked it out, which is a good idea cuz that's not a memory I need to repeat.

You know, Coach Ripley talked to us about drinking and driving. He kept trying to get me to come to one of those S.A.D.D. Student Athletes Detest Drugs meetings, but I thought they were stupid. Not any more. It's just this wasn't supposed to happen. I know I like my brew, my sunshine for that cloudy day, but I've never been in an accident before. And I wasn't even driving this time. Andy didn't even have that much, but we were clowning around so much, he couldn't help but lose control of the car.

I love that they tried to save me. I know they all tried hard. But wasn't nothin' they could do. Now, as I look back, I wish I hadn't called Andy's name out. I couldn't help it then. I was just so damn scared. But I can see Andy, can see how he's hiding his real feelings. And he's not taking that shrink seriously. It's cool that his parents set him up with a shrink, but it's like they just dumped him with the psychologist, like they don't really want anything to do with it all.

And I hate that someone put that "Killer" sign on Andy's locker. Yeah, I know who did, and that punk Brewster Carr hasn't heard the last from me. He better watch his step.

I sure hate I missed that last game. That's what really made me start worrying about Andy. He's got a crazy look in his eyes, and I know that guilt is eating him up. He's gotta get over it. But I don't know how.

more Tears

Thanks, Nicole, for the note about orange juice! I tried to post on your livejournal blog but both the anonymous and the OpenID options were grayed out and I don't have a livejournal account. Let's hope we can work out a solution!

My brain is fried, or more appropriately, just not working very well after all this allergy/bronchial whatever-this-is-that's-plaguing-me. Translated, that sentence means I have almost nothing to say...except that I wish everyone would hurry up and finish Tears of a Tiger so we can discuss the whole thing. OK, that was me being impatient. I keep wanting to talk about the ending of the book, but I can't do that until we all get there!

I'm really curious to see what happens when the three students who volunteered to email Sharon Draper (Ebony, Ja'Neese, and Nicole) get a response from the author. Here's her website, in case y'all haven't googled it yet: SharonDraper.Com.

blog assignment #1

I want to write about Tears of a Tiger. I just read this book for the first time this past summer on the recommendation of a teacher from Missouri. I've never taught this book. Right now, I'm sort of dreading reading the book again, because it's so sad. But it's real, too. I don't want to spoil anything for folks who haven't read, so I'll just say that this time around, I'll be looking for places in the text where things might have gone differently. Why does Sharon Draper choose this incident? Why does she start with a car crash? Also, she doesn't focus on alcohol, but it's there.

I went to the public library catalog to see if there were copies available, and one of the books I found under Draper's name was about burning out as a teacher. I'm going to try and get it today. I wonder what kind of teacher Draper was and how she started writing and why.

Welcome!

Welcome to Blogging in World Literature! My class blog allows me to write about class and to list all your blogs in the column to the right. Be creative...change your template, add music, give us pictures!