Stepping Up . . . Breaking Out:
Opportunity & Choice for Girls in Changing Times
A Unit Plan
Lisa Kang
December 5, 2006
English 112B
Dr. Mary Warner
�My
hump. My hump my hump my hump. My lovely lady lumps �, �My Humps�,
Black Eyed Peas
�Bitch choose with me, I'll have you stripping in the street� �P.I.M.P.�, 50 Cent
Young women today are bombarded with media
images of feminine perfection, often presented simultaneously with images of
female degradation, and often with a message that seems little more than a
mandate to devote their lives to becoming desirable objects of consumption for
young men. Although, in the
past several decades, feminism has offered to women the possibility of
opportunity � the freedom to make choices as to what roles to play, which life
paths to take and what identity they want to form � the truth of the matter is
that traditional sex-roles are still so pervasive as to be the norm. So while feminism has been busy opening
some doors and knocking on some others, the popular media has slammed just as
many shut, discouraging women from straying from the feminine norm of seeking
external images and male approval to shape their identity.
If feminism in the U.S. is a still emerging
idea, then feminism in Asian, Middle Eastern, African, Latin American and some
European cultures is still a foreign idea. While progress has been made for women of color world-wide,
the countries and cultures of these women can still said to be male-dominated
and female-subordinated, with much less questioning of the status-quo than
occurs in the U.S. today. Asian American Studies researcher, Laura Uba,
underscores this lasting power of traditional values in many non Western (and a
not a few Western) cultures with the specific example of Asian women in the
U.S.:
If
Asian Americans fit into more well-defined sex roles than Euro-Americans, this
could be explained by the influences of Asian cultures, which define and
differentiate sex roles more clearly than is typically done in Western Society
. . . Asian American cultural values and interpersonal styles may be more
consonant with traditional femininity than the dominant American values and
styles are. (Asian Americans,
Personality Patterns, Identity, and Mental Health, 1994)
When women from these traditionally-oriented
cultures to another country in which women have more freedom to define
themselves as individuals, they often undergo a period of confusion (a period
that may last a lifetime . . .) in which the new ideals of womanhood and femininity
come into conflict with the old ideals.
Girls who grow up in one country, but whose families derive from another
country, may experience the same confusion, as well, while they must adapt to
one culture at home and another outside the home.
While this extended period of confusion can be
difficult and painful for women, it offers a ripe opportunity for them to
re-define themselves and their values and re-structure their lives around these
values, or, in other words, change. The process of change, too, may be
difficult and painful, but provides for a woman an opportunity to form an
identity by making conscious choices.
Whether her choice is to live by familiar cultural values or to change
her life according to new beliefs, a woman allows herself to be more fully
human when she sees that her life is in her own hands. She defines herself apart from
traditional, �tribal� beliefs by forming a consciousness from an awareness
outside her primary culture.
This confusion of values in the formation of a
new identity is particularly keen and poignant in the adolescent years. Adolescent girls are going through a
period of rapid change in which they are faced with many doubts and decisions
while their identities as adults emerge.
Adolescent girls who are immigrants or children of immigrants face
further challenges in shaping their self-images because they must integrate the
values of more than one culture.
And sex-role values are particularly problematic for these girls as
these values very often are contradict each other and are particularly
pertinent to a girl�s emerging identity as a sexual being and a woman.
This unit addresses this confusion by
introducing to the curriculum literature about young girls in changing
environments during different historical periods and different cultures. A major theme of the unit is therefore
the immigrant experience, The overall emphasis, however, is on young women�s
experiences of new people, places, attitudes and values, whether because they
are in a new country or because they are living in changing times. The centerpiece of this unit is Willa
Cather�s classic novel, My Antonia,
a story of a young boy�s lasting memories with immigrant girls in the American
Frontier shortly after the advent of the 20th Century. Although this five-week unit explores
cultures of countries outside the U.S, it is best taught as part of an 11th grade
American Literature course because Willa Catcher is an American writer and the
theme of gender and change may be better appreciated by the older student.
My Antonia is told by successful attorney, James Burden, as he relates
the vivid and cherished memories of his boyhood on the Nebraska frontier, and of
a young Bohemian girl, Antonia, with whom he becomes friends, and her poverty
and tragedy stricken family, the Shimerdas. James recalls his arrival at his grandparent�s homestead in
Nebraska shortly after the death of his parents. He is soon introduced to the harsh realities not only of
making a livelihood on the prairie, but of starting anew as a foreigner in
America, as many of his new acquaintances are. As a boy, he is quick to absorb the beauty of the frontier
and to wonder at the novelty of his new existence and the new people he meets. He is also quick to notice the
injustice of the treatment against the immigrants who have come to work the
land, along with the American pioneers, and their struggle to survive in a
foreign country. His first meting
with Antonia, the eldest daughter of a nearby Bohemian family, is an immediate
delight, however. The two become
quick friends, although her family presents many trials for him and his
grandparents, who are eager to help the poor, na�ve Shimerdas.
Jim�s
fondness and admiration for Antonia grows into a life-long love of her and her
kind, open heart and manners. She
comes to represent all that is good and true about the hearty and resourceful
Scandinavian and Eastern European immigrant daughters in his corner of
Nebraska. But although Jim�s
admiration has firm basis in the simple and true nature of the se immigrant
girls, he also has a tendency to romanticize Antonia, and later her friend
Lena, with whom he also falls in love; he holds them to be above the American
girls of his town, always yearning for the easy warmth and openness they
represent throughout his life. �
�You always put a kind of glamour over them. The trouble with you, Jim, is that you�re romantic.� �
Frances Harling, Jim�s perceptive neighbor in Black Hawk, observes (My
Antonia, 1918). Indeed, Jim waxes fairly
rhapsodic in his praise of Antonia:
Her
warm, sweet face, her kind arms, and the true heart in her; she was, oh, she
was still my Antonia! I looked
with contempt at the dark, silent little houses about me as I walked home, and
thought of the stupid young men who were asleep in some of them. I knew where the real women were,
though I was only a boy; and I would not be afraid of them, either! (My
Antonia, 1918)
Jim
further objectifies Antonia as he falls into the traditional male-dominant role
he despises in many of the men around him. He despises that Antonia must defer to her self-serving
older brother, Ambrosch, but also finds himself wishing that Antonia, who is
three years his senior, would �defer to him rather than assuming a protective
manner�, as Dana Kinnison states in her essay, �Images of Possibility: Gender Identity in Willa Cather�s My
Antonia.� (Women in Literature, 2003).
Kinnison further reflects on Jim�s (and Willa Cather�s) tendencies to
idealize the �country girls� as he fondly calls them:
Are
Antonia and Lena protofeminists or simply Jim�s beautiful Muses? Does Cather give in to convention by
insisting on the beauty of the immigrant girls, or is she expanding that which
is deemed beautiful since their looks are distinctly different from the town
girls? (Women in Literature,
2003)
Indeed, both Jim Burden and Willa Cather,
herself, idealize the immigrant girls in My Antonia , offering a rich and worthy opportunity for
students to explore the idealization and objectification of women throughout
history, up to and including contemporary times. This objectification is
evident in such images of women as presented in 50 Cent�s song and video of the
mainstream hip-hop hit, �P.I.M.P�, which the students will view at the
beginning of the unit.
Whether
Cather is truly objectifying her female characters or simply re-defining an
ideal of feminine beauty that was prevalent in her time, she is most certainly
offering to her readers a new prototype:
the strong, self-determined woman.
In My Antonia, this
prototype is forged from the harsh necessities of life on the frontier and the
opportunities that these exigencies present to the young women who find
themselves transplanted in this new world. Girls like Antonia and Lena may have had more comfortable
lives had their families remained in their home countries � lives as
comfortable and prescribed as those of the American girls in town whose futures
lie in the hands of the respectable and dull (in Jim�s eyes) men they will
marry. The �country girls� must
allow themselves to be hired out, so they may support the homesteads and often
very large brood of children of their parents. However, by going out into the world to work, they attain a
degree of freedom and independence that they may not have in other
circumstances. They, in fact,
become �men� in their ability and desire to support and better the lot of their
families. Their new identities as
independent beings together with the wide-open and frankly opportunistic spirit
of the American West, shapes their decisions and their futures, as many of
these girls choose non-traditional paths in their lives.
Antonia, for all her heart, courage and
energy, fares less well than Lena and her other immigrant friends. Lena chooses to remain single and
succeeds as a business woman, while Antonia is left pregnant at the altar by a
go0d-for-nothing railroad assistant and ends up marrying a good but rather
ineffectual man and bears him many children, sealing her fate as a hard-working
wife of a poor farmer. But, in the
end, when Jim visits her 20 years after the story of the novel takes place, he
finds Antonia to be content and at peace with her life. The students are left, then, with
several questions to ponder: Has Antonia fared poorly in her life? Is this the
life she would have wanted or expected? Is she truly less successful than her
friend, Lena? How would Antonia�s
life been different had she remained in Bohemia? What sort of lives can Antonia�s children expect to
have? Will they be able to make
decisions to make their lives better?
Is Antonia living for her children�s future, as many immigrant parents
do? And, finally, how has the
demands of coming to America changed Antonia, Lena and the immigrant girls in
the story? What decisions did
being in a new culture in the �new world� allow them to make?
My Antonia
offers several other strong female characters, not only in the immigrant
girls, but also in many of the women in and around the town of Black Hawk. Jim�s grandmother, his neighbor and
Antonia�s employer, Mrs. Harling, and Frances, her daughter, are all capable,
intelligent and well respected by woman and man alike in their community. All
these women are able to find strength within the confines of their prescribed
roles and are able to expand the boundaries of these definitions, as well,
gaining reputations such as Frances�s, as a capable, level-headed and savvy
business woman. They also form
strong connections with each other, friend with friend, employer with employee,
woman with child.
���
Because of its poetic descriptive passages,
its sensitive male narrator and its strong female characters, My Antonia is an unabashedly female-centric novel, one
that is the starting-point for an unabashedly �girl-centered� teaching
unit. In these post-feminist
times, no apologies are necessary for a unit that is female and feminist in
nature, however. Although recent
studies indicate that boys� academic skills may be sliding because of the
recent focus on the remediation of academic curricula for girls, in the worst
cases being �treated like defective girls� (Newsweek, 2006), there is still a strong need for
educators to direct young women�s thoughts inwardly, allowing them to see how
they are adhering to values that may not serve them nor their sense of who they
are in the future. The
disadvantages girls continue to suffer in the school environment is confirmed
by the observations of education researcher, David Sadker:
When
my late wife, Myra, and I first began our research documenting sexism in
schools, we were astonished to discover that even skilled and gifted teachers
made boys the center of their instructional efforts. Teachers asked boys more questions than they asked girls;
and awarded boys more praise, meted out more criticism, and directed more
instructional help to them as well. Even when the teacher did not call on boys,
boys would simply shout out their answers and comments, and the teacher would
accept these callouts. Either way,
boys were capturing the instructional spotlight (Women in Literature, 2003).
If
Sadker�s observations reflect wider trends, then girls still very much need
special encouragement in school, and this need warrants a month-long unit
devoted to the topic of girls.
Women�s History month (March) is a possible justification for doing so,
but, truly, a greater justification would simply be that boys benefit from
learning about girls, too.* Boys, like anyone, need to understand
those who are different from themselves. And there are few greater or more
fundamental differences that exist between people than that between genders.
Karen
Cushman, writer of historical fiction about young adult women (and author of Matilda
Bone, a book included in this
Unit Plan) states her case for writing books for girls for the benefit of both
girls and boys:
If
books about girls who are interesting, active, clever and curious aren�t being
read by boys, isn�t that the problem?
Are we teaching boys somehow to be alienated and offended by female
protagonists? , , , I believe
books, like all the media, tell children what they ought to be like. They provide role models for young
people constructing their identity.
And both genders need role models of both sexes who are strong,
independent, determined, and resourceful.
We writers can say, �Look.
Here are people, all kinds of people, who are worthy of respect and
admiration. And this is how they
act.� (Literature for Today�s Young Adults, 2005).
This
unit begins by presenting to the students contemporary images of women that
they are familiar with and most likely can relate to in some way. Throughout the lesson, students will be
asked to refer back to contemporary values as represented by the images
presented and to their personal experiences as they proceed through material
which presents characters from unfamiliar times and places.
Pre-reading
activities:
1. The students will be presented with a
series of images, which they are asked to respond to in their journals.
-
The first image is
a diagram of a woman�s rib cage before and after ribs have been removed to
achieve the ideal corseted figure from the book The Good Ol� Days (1972; copy of image attached).
The students will be asked to write in their
journals in response to the following question: How are times different for women from the early 1900�s,
when this drawing was made?
-
- The second
image is actually a clip from the video of the mainstream hip-hop hit, �My
Humps� by the Black Eyed Peas
The students will be asked to write down words
and associations that come to mind when they watch this video.
-
- The third set
of images are from another music video, this one by 50 Cent, entitled �P.I.M.P�
The students will be asked to write down words
and associations that come to mind when they watch this video. They will then be asked the following
question: How are times different
for women now as compared to the early 1900�s, when the corset was in fashion?
-
- The fourth
image is from a book of photographs entitled Return to Mexico, Journeys
Beyond the Mask (1992). The photo is of a young, pre-pubescent
girl posing for the camera in a mock-sexy pose in what seems to be the backyard
of her home in the shadow of a factory yard (copy of image attached).
The students are asked the following questions: Who is this girl? Who is she pretending to be? How do you think she would respond to
the videos we just saw? Would you
agree or disagree with her?
2.
The teacher will
then involve the students in a brief, large-group discussion about the students�
responses to the images and videos.
The students are asked to ponder (and discuss) the question: How far have women come towards being
treated as equal and being given their due as individuals in the past 100
years?
(I realize that this is all rather
manipulative, but as Karen Cushman says, perhaps sometimes �imposing an agenda
on children� is warranted:
Kids aren�t born religious or polite or
cooperative. These are values
taught them by adults and the world around them. The world is constantly sending messages about what it means
to be loveable, successful, worthy, male, or female. The question is, What do we want those messages to be? (Literature for Today�s Young Adults, 2006) )
3.
As homework, the
students will be asked to watch 20 minutes of popular hip-hop music videos,
either at home, at a classmate�s or friend�s house, or in the classroom or
school media room during off-class hours.
They are asked to write down the names and artists of the songs they
viewed and then a sentence or two describing how women are portrayed in each
video. The expectation is that
they will notice that somewhere between 50% and 80% of the videos portray women
in a sexual manner. The videos
from the male point-of-view will generally show women as objects of sexual attraction;
the videos from the female point-of-view will generally show women presenting
themselves as objectives of sexual attraction.
4. In small groups, the students will be asked to
summarize the lyrics to the 50 Cent� song/video that they just heard/viewed:
�P.I.M.P.� They will be asked to
remember these lyrics at the end of the unit, when they are also asked to read
Maya Angelou�s �Phenomenal Woman�.
"P.I.M.P."
50 Cent
[Chorus]
I don't know what you heard about me
But a bitch can't get a dollar out of me
No Cadillac, no perms, you can't see
That I'm a motherfucking P-I-M-P
[Repeat]
[Verse 1]
Now shorty, she in the club, she dancing
for dollars
She got a thing for that Gucci, that
Fendi, that Prada
That BCBG, Burberry, Dolce and Gabana
She feed them foolish fantasies, they pay
her cause they wanna
I spit a little G man, and my game got
her
A hour later, have that ass up in the
Ramada
Them trick niggas in her ear saying they
think about her
I got the bitch by the bar trying to get
a drink up out her
She like my style, she like my smile, she
like the way I talk
She from the country, think she like me
cause I'm from New York
I ain't that nigga trying to holla cause
I want some head
I'm that nigga trying to holla cause I
want some bread
I could care less how she perform when
she in the bed
Bitch hit that track, catch a date, and
come and pay the kid
Look baby this is simple, you can't see
You fucking with me, you fucking with a
P-I-M-P
[Chorus]
[Verse 2]
I'm bout my money you see, girl you can
holla at me
If you fucking with me, I'm a P-I-M-P
Not what you see on TV, no Cadillac, no
greasy
Head full of hair, bitch I'm a P-I-M-P
Come get money with me, if you curious to
see
how it feels to be with a P-I-M-P
Roll in the Benz with me, you could watch
TV
From the backseat of my V, I'm a P-I-M-P
Girl we could pop some champagne and we
could have a ball
We could toast to the good life, girl we
could have it all
We could really splurge girl, and tear up
the mall
If ever you needed someone, I'm the one
you should call
I'll be there to pick you up, if ever you
should fall
If you got problems, I can solve'em, they
big or they small
That other nigga you be with ain't bout
shit
I'm your friend, your father, and
confidant, BITCH
[Chorus]
[Verse 3]
I told you fools before, I stay with the
tools
I keep a Benz, some rims, and some jewels
I holla at a hoe til I got a bitch
confused
She got on Payless, me I got on gator
shoes
I'm shopping for chinchillas, in the
summer they cheaper
Man this hoe you can have her, when I'm
done I ain't gon keep her
Man, bitches come and go, every nigga
pimpin know
You saying it's secret, but you ain't
gotta keep it on the low
Bitch choose with me, I'll have you
stripping in the street
Put my other hoes down, you get your ass
beat
Now Nik my bottom bitch, she always come
up with my bread
The last nigga she was with put stitches
in her head
Get your hoe out of pocket, I'll put a
charge on a bitch
Cause I need 4 TVs and AMGs for the six
Hoe make a pimp rich, I ain't paying
bitch
Catch a date, suck a dick, shiiit, TRICK
[Chorus]
Yeah, in Hollywood they say there's no
b'ness like show b'ness
In the hood they say, there's no b'ness
like hoe b'ness ya know
They say I talk a lil fast, but if you
listen a lil faster
I ain't got to slow down for you to catch
up, BITCH
5. a. Students will form groups to discuss a
scenario given to them on a handout in which the student must deal with two
conflicting desires/values and are asked to brainstorm solutions about how to
function with both.
Example Scenario 1:
-You want to go on a date
with a guy/girl you like.
-Your family is
very religious and the person you want to date is of another religion than your
family.
-You don�t want to have to
lie to your parents, who don�t like it when you date, anyhow. They would be upset and probably stop
you from seeing this person � but you want your freedom, too. You want to see whom you want to see. Your friends are dating people outside
of their own race and religion � why can�t you?
Example Scenario 2:
-Your best friend
gets a job working at .
-There�s a job opening there
and s/he wants you to apply, too, so you can work together, meet the cute
customers, and make some extra money so that you can do that cool thing you
were planning together (fill in the blank) .
-You want to join him/her to
be a good friend and have fun, and it would sure be nice to have some extra
money � but you
want to get your grades up so you can go to college after you graduate, and
that means spending more time studying and at an after-school tutorial
program.
-If you don�t take the job,
you�ll feel out of it and worry that you�ll lose your best friend (and other
friends), but if you do, your grades will suffer. How do you deal with this situation?
b. Class re-groups to discuss
the dilemmas and each group�s solution(s) to the dilemmas. Do they agree with
their classmates� solutions or would they do something differently?
c. The teacher will ask the
class about their own experiences.
The teacher will ask them what values their families have and write them
on the board. What are some things
that they (or other kids or friends they know at school) might disagree with
and want to do differently?
It is then explained to the class
that they will be reading about the experience of a girl whose family
immigrated to the U.S. 100 years ago,My Antonia by Willa Cather, which tells the story of two
immigrant girls as told by a teenage American boy in the early 1900�s. They are told that they will need to
bring their understanding of how coming to a new country or even a new part of
the country (as Jim does) and being exposed to new people and new values can
change a person�s outlook on life, on how a person can be exposed to values
that may be conflicting, how attitudes and values can change and how
immigrating to a new country can help a person re-define him or herself. The class is informed that during the
reading of the book, they will be asked to give special attention to changing
roles of and attitudes towards women.
During-Reading
Activities:
During
the reading of the text, two objectives must be accomplished: 1. The students must be able to express in discussion and
writing the development of a main character in the book as it relates to the
unit�s theme: opportunity and
choice for girls in changing times.
2. The students must be
able to express in creative writing, art work and brief presentations their
understanding of what life on the prairie in the American Frontier might have
been like if they were living there in the early part of the 20th
century.
Remainder
of Week One, Week Two
The
focus of the remainder of Week One (the first part of Week One was devoted to
the Pre-Reading activities, described above) and Week Two is on the first part
of My Antonia, �The Shimerdas�,
in which James Burden describes his arrival on the prairie, his introduction to
the many immigrants who have arrived with him, the difficulties of these
immigrants and his special friendship with Antonia. The learning activities for this part of the unit are as
follows.
1.
The teacher will
give the students a brief overview
of the settling of the American West, with unabashed use of internet resources,
such as PBS�s website, �Frontier House� (http://www.pbs.org/wnet/frontierhouse/frontierlife/),
showing images of and giving brief summaries as well as reading brief excerpts
about homesteading on the American Frontier from the website.
2.
An important message to send to students who are immigrants and
children of immigrants is that European-Americans, or �white people� are
originally from Europe and therefore were also originally immigrants. Passages such as the following from Coming
to America are instructive to show/read to the students:
Of the roughly
fifty-five million immigrants who have, in historic times, come to what is now
the United States, nearly seven out of ten came from Europe, and without in any
way minimizing the importance of the Africans, Asians, and Latin Americans who
have come, we must never forget that, until the 1960�s, Europeans predominated
in migration . . . (Coming to America, 1990)
And the following
passage, about Eastern Europeans, will help ground the students reading of My
Antonia in reality:
Most members of
these groups who came to the United Stats began to arrive in the last years of
the nineteenth century and the initial ones of the twentieth. They settled
predominately in the cities of the north-eastern and north-central states. . .
Although they came to American cities, these immigrants did not, generally,
come from European cities. They
were, overwhelmingly, peasants from the less-developed regions of Europe, who
lived mainly in villages and small towns.
Had there been land available, and had they been able to buy it, many of
them would surely have become farmers in America . . But immigrants, or more
properly the decision makers in immigrant families, all made at least one
crucial decision: They chose to
come to America. They were thus,
in this sense movers rather than the moved. Metaphors, however striking or dramatic, that suggest
otherwise are misleading and contribute to the stereotype of the �dumb�
immigrant. To the English-speaking
Americans of course, these immigrants did indeed seem literally �dumb�: They could not talk in a language
appropriate to �God�s country. (Coming
to America, 1990)
Photos
of immigrants from this book will be shown to the class (copies attached). Students will briefly discuss, in a
whole-class discussion, the similarities and differences of attitudes towards
immigrants � including their own families today and immigrants to the U.S.
nearly 100 years ago.
3.
My Antonia is a character driven novel and the theme of
the unit is also character driven, in that it is an exploration of conflict and
change within individuals. The
students will form small reading groups, composed as equally of males and
females as possible. In these groups,
the students will explore the characters of Jim and Antonia, with the girls
focusing on and taking the viewpoint of Jim and the boys that of Antonia.
4.
Students will
read chapters from the book together in class, as well as individually at
home. As they read, they will
individually take note of character traits using a �Character T�, with words
describing the character on one side of the T and passages from the book
supporting these descriptions on the other. They will also keep a character T for their �adopted�
character�s perceptions of
the other character. They will
discuss their character descriptions and perceptions in their small groups,
comparing notes and discussing any differences between their description of
their own character and the perception of that character by the other
character.
5.
Students will
also keep logs of the character�s attitudes towards women and traditional roles
in their journals, again discussing in their small groups these attitudes and
the �rightness� or �wrongness� of these attitudes in the eyes of the other
character.
6.
The pace of My
Antonia is gentle and,
frankly, for the average teenager, slow; the plot is simple and the sparse
action is interspersed with long, descriptive passages. To �acculturate� the students to
Cather�s poetic and to life on the frontier in the early 1900�s, reading and
character analysis exercises will be alternated with exercises that introduce
the students to the images and imagery of the American plains and involve them
in vicariously experiencing life as a homesteader might have lived it.
a.
Students will be
shown sections of Terrence Malick�s 1978 film, Days of Heaven, which shows the stark beauty of life on the
plains at around the same time period in which My Antonia is set (and is said by some to be the most
beautifully shot included film of all time). The students will then be asked to 1. Write short poems describing the images
from the film, 2. Find passages in
the book that fit one or two of the images from the film, and 3. Create pictorial representations of
selected passages from the book.
b.
Poetry can be
(only somewhat facetiously) defined as any writing that isn�t right justified. The student groups are asked to take a
passage of the book and de-right-justify it. The teacher will then type up these poems and show them to
the entire class on the projector:
Example:
Passage from the book:
July came on with that breathless, brilliant
heat which makes the plains of Kansas and Nebraska the best country in the
world. It seemed as if we could
hear the corn growing in the night;
under the stars one caught a faint crackling in the dewy, heavy-odoured
cornfields where the feathered stalks stood so juicy and green (137).
Possible poem:
July came on
with that
breathless
brilliant
heat.
It seemed as
if We could
hear
thecorngrowinginthenight
under
the stars
c.
The students will
be asked to locate descriptive passages that enhance their understanding of the
story and the characters. In their
journal writing, they will answer the questions: How is the landscape a separate character in the book? How do the other characters interact
with this �character�, the landscape?
d.
Students will write down 3 � 4 passages
about an aspect of frontier life that is different from their own, cotemporary,
lives. They will answer the
following questions: How is this
similar to something they do or experience in their own lives? How is it different? If different, how would they or their
lives be different if some aspect of their life was replaced by this aspect of
life on the plains in 1900?
Week 3, 1st part of Week 4
In
this section of the unit, the students will read the second half of the book,
which focuses on Jim�s life in town, his friendship with the immigrant �hired
girls�, his relationship with Lena when he is at university, and, finally, his
reunion with Antonia after they are well into adulthood. The fates and fortunes of Antonia, Lena
and several of the immigrant girls are described in the final part of the
book. The learning activities for
this part of the unit are as follows:
7.
Using the insights they have gleaned from the discussions, journal
writing and other exercises, the students will write a paper on one of the two
topics:
a.
Choose a female
character and write about how this character changes because of the
opportunities that are presented or taken away from her. What conflicting
values is she faced with? How does
she face this conflict? What
decision does she make? Does her
life change for better or worse?
Why?
b.
Write about
James Burdens attitudes towards women and how they might or might not reflect
Willa Cather�s attitudes. Does
Willa Cather herself romanticize these �country girls� or is she redefining
beauty?
Extending the
Unit (The remainder of Week 4 , Week 5)
To deepen their understanding of the theme of
the unit and broaden their understanding of character as related to a
particular place and period of time, the students will do further reading of
fiction that is centered around the struggles of a young woman to form an
identity in the face of conflicting messages about what it is and what it means
to be a woman. The students will
choose one novel from a number of works written for young adults that present s
a diversity of young women in a diversity of times and places. Many of these women are immigrants, as
in My Antonia, and all of
them are faced with divergent societal, familial and personal attitudes towards
themselves as women. The students
will form groups according to the book each has selected � with all those
reading A Northern Light,
for example, forming a group with all others reading A Northern Light.
As with My Antonia,
the groups will read the book together in class and as individuals, outside of
class. They will discuss the book,
forming their own agenda for discussion and journal writing, as modeled by the
whole-class work on My Antonia
(and guided by the teacher) and will develop a group book talk presentation on
their book, to be given in front of the entire class by the end of week 5. The book talk must introduce the class
to the time and place of the book, including imagery in the form of art,
poetry, or music or video collages; it must present the different sex-role
values apparent to the main character in the book; it must summarize the story
of the book, highlighting the special challenges for the character,
opportunities that these challenges presented to the character and the choices
the character makes; it must demonstrate their understanding of how changes in
the characters environment are reflected in the character�s development
Young Adult Literature Selections
A
Northern Light by Jennifer Donnelly
Set
in 1906 against the back drop of the murder of Grace Brown, a historical
fact, A Northern Light tells the story of a young woman, Mattie, who
must make a very difficult decision: should she move to New York City to pursue
her education, or should she remain in the North Woods to marry and fulfill her
familial obligations . . . On her death bed, Mattie�s mother committed Mattie
to a promise; she must remain with her family and take care of them. As the story progresses, this becomes a
difficult promise to fulfill, for Mattie has aspirations and pursuits of her
own. She is a gifted writer and
has been provided the opportunity to go to college on a full scholarship. Unfortunately, Mattie�s father is
against the idea. He needs her to
stay home and help support the family who is struggling financially . . .She
decides to get a job at the Glenmore Hotel, initially against the will of her
father, but he eventually gives in.
One day while she is working, a woman hands her a bundle of letters and
tells her to burn them, no one must ever see them. It is this same woman whose dead body is later pulled from
the river . . . One night, [Mattie] decides to read the letters that Grace
Brown had given her before her death at the lake. It is through these letters and the story and truth that
they reveal that Mattie finds the strength to make her decision. (Book Talk by Sarah Silva)
My
Forbidden Face: Growing up under
the Taliban by Latifa
Latifa
is a teenager in Kabul, Afghanistan, on September 27, 1996, when the Taliban
take control of Kabul. From this
day, her family, her city, and her country are never the same. Yes, she lived a childhood that was
seldom free of bombing and attacks, but she had never faced the oppression that
came with the Taliban controlling Kabul.
Her mother, who is a doctor, can no longer practice medicine �
especially not medicine for women; after the Taliban, women cannot get any
medical treatment. Latifa had just
passed the first part of the university exams and was hoping for a career in
journalism. After the takeover,
she cannot attend school and all hopes of a �normal� career are gone. She and many others, especially women,
become prisoners in their own homes. (Adolescents in the Search for Meaning by Mary L. Warner)
The
Poisonwood Bible � by Barbara
Kingsolver
Nathan
Price�s rigid understanding about being a missionary radically and sometimes
violently affects his wife, Orleana; his four daughters, Leah, Adah, Rachel and
Ruth May; and the Congoloese. He
tries to convert the natives over a year and a half period of hunger, disease,
drought, witchcraft, p political wars, pestilential rains, and political
upheaval. In Kilanga, Leah�s
sisters help their mother, while Leah chooses to work in her father�s
garden. The garden, which he
stubbornly plants and cultivates by Western methods, is as barren as his
cultivation of souls. The
education and eventual liberation of the five women from Nathan�s arrogant
tyranny suggest Africa�s resistance to destructive colonialism. Leah falls in love with and eventually
marries Anatole, an African teacher.
Adah suffers form a language disorder and chooses silence; she knows
that saying words wrong creates disrespect and disaster. When she finally chooses to speak, she
becomes a researcher on AIDS and Ebola
(Adolescents in the Search for Meaning, by Mary L. Warner)
Grass
Roof, Tin Roof by Dao Strom
One difficulty of novels with multiple
stories and points of view is that readers can become attached to an especially
charismatic character and not want to relinquish him or her. So it is with Grass
Roof, Tin Roof, Dao Strom's thoughtful and adept debut. The book begins in
Vietnam on the verge of the Communist takeover and describes the dangerous
career in political journalism of Than, a young woman whose real aim had been
to write a romantic serial inspired by Gone with the Wind. Than's lover
and mentor, a mysterious figure named Giang, has been signing his own articles
with her name, and eventually, although the words are rarely hers, Than
acquires the manner and confidence of an investigative reporter. When the
newspapers are shut down, and Than gives birth to Giang's illegitimate
daughter, she has little choice but to leave for America. Another writer would
stop the tale at this crucial transition, but Strom's novel is not a simple
love story set against brutality and oppression. Like a vine, her narrative
twists and pushes forward, flowering at unexpected points. The American
portions of Grass Roof, Tin Roof are as well sustained, if not as vividly hued,
as the opening. If we regret the shift in focus away from the engaging Than, we
are soon enough drawn into the lives of Than's children and their Danish-born
stepfather. (Amazon.com)
Mathilda
Bone � by Karen Cushman
Fourteen-year-old
Matilda has been raised on a manor by Father Leufredus, with the religious
emphasis of medieval England. She
has been taught reading, writing, Latin and Greek, and �to seek the higher
things.� She is not eager to be in
the guardianship of Red Peg, the bonesetter in �Blood and Bone Alley,� who is
eager for someone to tend fires, prepare meals, brew lotions, boil tonics,
soothe and restrain patients, an help in the setting of bones. The book conveys much of the medieval
world, the roles of women in medicine, and the challenges they faced, but most
central is Matilda�s coming of age in life and in her faith, coming to think
for herself, and coming to realize she is not alone.
(Adolescents
in the Search for Meaning by
Mary L. Warner)
A
Step from Heaven by An Na
-Publisher�s Weekly, 2002 (amazon.com)
.Flight to Freedom by Ana Veciana-Suarez
Yara
Garcia and her family live a middle-class life in Havana, Cuba. But in 1967, as Communist ruler Fidel
Castro tightens his hold on Cuba, the Garcias, who do not share the political
beliefs of the Communist Party, are forced to flee to Miami, Florida. There, Yara encounters a strange land
with foreign customs. She knows
very little English, and she is surprised to find that the other students in
her new school have much more freedom than she and her sisters. As the Garcias strive to realize their
drama of life in America, once-close relationships become strained by Mami�s
newfound independence and Papi�s involvement in a militant anti-Castro
government (Flight to Freedom)
Students have done a fair amount
of reflection on changing sex-roles in changing times. A concluding exercise will ask them to
sum up various attitudes towards women held by the different cultures and in
the different time periods in the books the class has read. This summing up can be done by asking
the students to give answers to the question,� What beliefs are helping/hurting
women?� for each book on a graphic organizer that makes comparisons in a simple
grid format. The teacher can
involve the students in a whole-class reflection on the works by asking them to
suggest responses to fill in the blanks of the grid, as the teacher writes them
in on the graphic organizer on an overhead projector.
The students� attention will then
be drawn to the 50 Cent music video of �P.I.M.P.� that was shown at the
beginning of the unit. They will
then be asked to reflect on and discuss the question: What beliefs are
helping/hurting women in our culture, today? Hopefully, their responses to this question will
reflect some thought generated by the exercise about how media images are
hurting women and how far we have yet to go as a society to recognize the
humanity of all
individuals.
The unit concludes by celebrating this individuality � and the dignity that women inherently possess by offering an �antidote� to the P.I.M.P.�s in our lives. The students will read Maya Angelou�s poem, �Phenomenal Woman�, a declaration of independence of women from traditional standards of beauty:
�Phenomenal Woman�
Maya Angelou
Pretty women wonder where my secret
lies.
I'm not cute or built to suit a fashion
model's size
But when I start to tell them,
They think I'm telling lies.
I say,
It's in the reach of my arms
The span of my hips,
The stride of my step,
The curl of my lips.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.
I walk into a room
Just as cool as you please,
And to a man,
The fellows stand or
Fall down on their knees.
Then they swarm around me,
A hive of honey bees.
I say,
It's the fire in my eyes,
And the flash of my teeth,
The swing in my waist,
And the joy in my feet.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.
Men themselves have wondered
What they see in me.
They try so much
But they can't touch
My inner mystery.
When I try to show them
They say they still can't see.
I say,
It's in the arch of my back,
The sun of my smile,
The ride of my breasts,
The grace of my style.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.
Now you understand
Just why my head's not bowed.
I don't shout or jump about
Or have to talk real loud.
When you see me passing
It ought to make you proud.
I say,
It's in the click of my heels,
The bend of my hair,
the palm of my hand,
The need of my care,
'Cause I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.
(Phenomenal Woman, 1978)
The students will do a choral reading of the
poem, allowing all voices to be heard.
A small volunteer group will then jam on reading the poem as an
ensemble, deciding spontaneously which lines or words will be said by one
person, which by all, which by a few, and how the lines will be said. The class then responds to the jam,
making decisions about how and by whom and by how many people each line could
be said. They can discuss how
different characters might be portrayed at different lines. The volunteer group then performs the
poem, using the class�s suggestions and under the class�s direction. The result
should be a fun interpretative reading that allows for a variety of voices to
be heard individually as well as collectively. By focusing on the interpretation of the poem, the class
will be led to think more deeply about the words and meaning of the poem,
leaving them, at the end of this five week unit, with an indelible impression
of the �Phenomenality� of each woman we have studied in the unit and of every
woman that they are and know.
Works
Cited
1. 50 Cent. �P.I.M.P.�.
Music Video. Shady Records, 2003.
2. Abbas. Return
to Mexico: Journeys Beyond the
Mask. New
York: W.W. Norton &
Co., 1992.
3. <http://www.amazon.com>
4. Angelou, Maya. Phenomenal
Woman, Four Poems Celebrating Women. New York:
Random House, 1978.
5. Black Eyed Peas. �My
Humps�. Music Video. A&M,
2005.
6.Cather, Willa. My
Antonia. Paperback edition. Boston: Houghton Mifflen
c.
Company,
1954.
7. Cohn, David L. The
Good Old Days. Reprint Edition. New York: Arno Press, 1976
8. Cushman, Karen. Matilda
Bone. Reprint.
New York: Dell Yearling, 2002.
9. Daniels, Robert. Coming
to America: A History of Immigration and Ethnicity in
American Life. Princeton, NJ: Harper Collins
Publishers, 1990.
10. Days of Heaven. Dir. Terrance Malick. Paraount Pictures, 1978.
Donnelley, Jennifer.
A Northern Light. Orlando, FL: Harcourt Books, 2003.
11. Donelson, Kenneth L & Alleen Pace Nilsen. Literature for Today�s Young Adults. Boston:
Pearson Education, Inc., 2005.
12. Fisher, Jerilyn and Ellen S. Silber, eds. Women in
Literature. Westport, CT:
Greenwood Press, 2003.
13 Frontier House, Frontier Life. PBS. 6 Dec. 2006.
<http://www.pbs.org/wnet/frontierhouse/frontierlife/>.
14. Kingsolver, Barbara.
The Poisonwood Bible. New York: Harper Perennial Classics,
1999.
15. Kinnison, Dana. �Images of Possibility: Gender Identity in Willa Cather�s My
Antonia
(1918)�, Women in Literature. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2003. 205-207.
16. Latifa. My
Forbidden Face: Growing Up Under the Taliban: A Young Woman�s Story.
New York: Hyperion, 2001.
18. `7. <http://www.lyrics007.com>
19. Na, An. A Step
from Heaven. New York: Penguin Putnam, 2001.
20. Strom, Dao. Grass
Roof, Tin Roof.
Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 2003.
21. Tyre, Peg. �The
Trouble with Boys�. Newsweek 30 Jan. 2006: 44-53.
22. Uba, Laura. Asian Americans, Personality
Patterns, Identity, and Mental Health,
New York: The Guilford Press, 1994.
23. Veciana-Suarez, Ana.
Flight to Freedom. New York: Orchard Books, 2002.
24. Warner, Mary L. Adolescents
in the Search for Meaning. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow
Press, 2006.