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October 31

I. Opening Conversations: SPOILERS
1) What happened in your book?  Yes, you can spoil it now.
2) What surprised or moved you?  OR, what disappointed you?  Why?   
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Blue Book Time:
​Writing and Sharing
Answer in any order and in any form. 
​Use stickers, colors, pens...whatever moves you.
1) Would you call this text  a counter-narrative of Black girlhood?  Why or why not?

2) How is Black girlhood/adolescence--- in terms of sexuality, culture, social beauty codes, language, politics, poverty, race, oppression, community, etc--- represented here?  What difference, if any, does that make?
 
3) What does this fictional account teach us about literacies, pedagogies, OR schools?

"EXTRA CREDIT" (but, really, only if you have time/energy/inspiration here): What would a Black feminist pedagogy--- or a BlackGirlMagic Pedagogy--- related to this book look like?  How would you assess... or, more specifically, what would a Black Feminist assessment look like?

THE NEXT READINGS: Urban Fiction


​Contemporary urban fiction (UF) is  a genre dominated by African American writers dating back to Iceberg Slim's and Donald Goines's writings in the 1970s.  Because so many teens read UF, especially Black girls, we will focus on the genre in a specific way. The distinctions between UF and YAL are often arbitrary as more school libraries have holdings of UF now.  Though there is more variety in YAL today than ever before, it is still largely a white, middle class enterprise.  Think of this as we imagine how and why Black teen girls are the largest readers of UF.

The texts in this unit all feature young Black women as protagonists where they talk as high school and/or college age girls (present-day or through their memories of such times).  These titles have been popular with secondary and post-secondary readers.  Our job is to imagine why and how. 

TRIGGER WARNING: Please note that these books are explicit, especially in terms of language and sex.  Sexual assault, neglect, abuse, incarceration, drug addiction, sex trafficking, intimate partner violence, extreme poverty, and general urban blight are just a few of the themes that are problematized.  The books won't shy away from "hard life" and paint a happy picture.  The authors, all of whom are Black women, intend to offer an intense view of contemporary life from the lens of young, Black, poor girls/women who find no salvation in respectability politics. If these themes bother you, then please read another of the texts from the school-sanctioned list from the previous readings in this unit.
Choices by Skyy  (hardcopy available)
Four friends; Lena, who is engaged to a basketball superstar, Denise, who is hoping that she will be the first in her family to graduate college, Freedom, who lives up to her name and Carmen, who needs to work on her self-esteem--lean on each other during their days at Freedom University.  This is a 4-part series.

The Coldest Winter Ever by Sister Souljah  (hardcopy available)
This 1999 book is an important site of ORIGINS for today's urban fiction.  In this book, Winter is the young, wealthy daughter of a prominent Brooklyn drug-dealing family. Quick-witted, sexy, and business-minded, she knows and loves the streets. But when a cold Winter wind blows her life in a direction she doesn't want to go, her street smarts and skills are put to the test of a lifetime.