Sandra K. Friday
After playing with and exploring the voices and what lies beneath them in Poetri's po-hop, and trying their own hand at it, students will experiment with the voices in the poem "On the Question of Race
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" This is a free-verse dialogue between an African American and a Latino American who speak alternately and then simultaneously in shared stanzas that repeat themselves almost as a chorus, about how they feel about filling out application forms that ask them to write down their race. With the potential for drama and the interaction between two readers, this poem will make an effective segue between Poetri's po-hop and a quintet of poems that will wrap up this section of the unit. This poem, "On the Question of Race," in which the two students explore in eight stanzas their real identity beyond the standard choices, (Black, White, Hispanic, or other) on the application, offers an effective formula for my students to imitate as they write about their own identity. The topics cover: favorite foods, favorite music, childhood games, grandparents, geography of ancestors and their own geography, addresses where they have lived, schools they have attended, family make-up, etc. My students will present their poems as a dialogue, just as the two students did in the original poem.
Students could readily answer the first of the four Language Arts CAPT questions in response to this poem, "On the Question of Race," "Dating Myself," and several other poems. The broad question is: "What are your thoughts and questions about this poem? Write down your first reaction or response to the poem and explain why you reacted this way." Prompts that might get students started are: (1.) At first I thought. . . but then as I finished reading . . . . (2.) The character . . . who said or did . . . . reminds me of . . . (3.) This poem seems to be about . . . because . . . (4.) The title of the poem is a good choice because. . . (See Lesson Plan # 2.)