Sandra K. Friday
Objective: After reading aloud and listening to other students read the poem, "On The Question of Race," students will practice answering the first question that always appears on the Language Arts CAPT: "What are your thoughts and questions about this poem?" This simple question can be daunting for students who do not know what kinds of phrases will help them explore their thoughts and questions on a piece of literature. Therefore, to help them become more adept at answering this question, they will practice using some of these prompts:
"At first I thought . . ., but then, as I continued or finished reading . . . I realized that . . ."
"The narrator who said or did . . . reminds me of . . ."
"This poem seems to be about . . . because . . ."
"The title of this poem is a good choice because . . ."
"I wonder why . . ."
"This poem made me feel . . . because . . ."
"The problem in this poem seems to be . . ."
"On The Question of Race" is a dialogue poem in which there are shaded areas that two students read in unison and then they alternate reading the other sections indicated by numerical sequence. The underlying question in this poem is how do a Latino and an African American feel about answering the question on an application form, "What is your race?" Do they simply write down "Hispanic" or "Black"? Does that one generalized word explain their identity? In the opening stanzas that each reads, they say that they think seriously about the question and consider writing down the truth about their identity and having their answers read. They decide that to answer the question each will write about his and her grandparents:
I have a dark man I have my grandmother's laughter
listening to a bolero inside this body
lighting a match
inside this body
Each will write about streets on which they have lived and/or music they love:
I have 18th and Columbia Rd I have rare essence
15 & Irving sarah vaughn
Petworth tonya la negra
Shaw and a yaqui deer song
Julio Iglesias inside this body
and Jackson 5
and Lilo Gonzales
inside this body
They will write about games they used to play:
I have doubledutch
miss mary mat
and king of the mountain
inside this body
One will write about his child:
I have a son
named John Enrique
who's brown and black
and human and tender
I have you
inside this body
They will name all of the schools they have attended, languages their ancestors knew, and aunts and uncles who live both near and far. In the final shared stanzas they write and read in unison:
But I stop | But I stop
And simply | And simply
write down write down
"Hispanic." Black (Lee, 403)
The rich diversity of their identity and the images they conjure juxtaposed to the single depersonalized word "Hispanic," or "Black," are provocative. Students will consider the effect of the repetition of the phrase "inside this body" at the end of many stanzas. As we listen to pairs of students read this poem, they may hear how the repetition of the phrase, "inside this body," gives the voice strength as the poem evolves. But then, at the end, that strength disappears in the last few lines.
I will give them a list of the prompts and we will choose one to write together, while I record their collective responses on a transparency on the overhead projector. We might experiment with, "I wonder why they repeated the phrase, "inside this body" at the end of so many stanzas?" This would give us an opportunity to explore the effects of repetition, and the repetition of this phrase in particular, where students are describing their unique racial and cultural make-up.
Once we have written our collective response to, "I wonder why . . ." students may choose one or two more prompts and respond to them as we have to this one.
Students ultimately will write their own poems using this format and their own stanzas addressing: ancestors, games, streets, countries, schools, music, ethnic foods, relatives, and any other categories that identify their uniqueness. In pairs, they will practice and read their poems to the class.