American Voices: Listening to Fiction, Poetry, and Prose

Voice Chart Example

Going Home is also by Eve Bunting and illustrated by David Diaz. This story is about Carlos and his family's journey to their home in Mexico. Carlos isn't too excited about the idea, but upon arrival to the Mexican town of La Perla, Carlos is swept into the local festivities by Grandfather, Aunt Ana, and the whole village. This story's theme is also one about the importance of family, community and ethnic and cultural identity, as well as compassion and acceptance; in this case, Carlos learns to understand place and his role in it. This book will resonate with my students, since many of them were born in Mexico, but have grown up in the States and have not spent a lot of time there. The read aloud will be conducted in the same manner as with Smoky Night and the same three questions will be asked. At the end of the story the class will generate another chart listing various voices and key words and phrases. The culminating activity will be to compare and contrast the authors' voices in these two books. Using a Venn diagram pocket chart ¹⁶ students will transfer the information from our charts into the pocket chart to determine similarities and differences among the voices in each story.

The next author I will focus on will be Faith Ringgold. Her protagonists are often young girls, and her books will provide a nice contrast to the boy characters of Eve Bunting's books. I will begin this part of the unit by using Tar Beach. Like Bunting's stories, the themes focus on the importance of family, community and ethnic and cultural identity. Tar Beach refers to the rooftop of main character's apartment building, where meals are shared with neighbors and her community gathers to socialize. This is the story of a girl, Cassie Louise Lightfoot, who flies over the new labor union building her father is helping to construct. Cassie's father is excluded from "the Union" because of his race; he is biracial—half African-American and half Native American. Unlike Smoky Night and Going Home, Ringgold's books tend to use more metaphors and allegory. Ringgold is concerned with the experience of the Black female in America, and she empowers her protagonists with fantastical gifts. In the case of Tar Beach, Cassie has the ability to fly and claim ownership over the things she flies above. She has the freedom that her forefathers did not. The richness of this story and the metaphors and issues contained within the book will bring about interesting discussions for the students. The same questions will be presented at the start of the read aloud. However, instead of repeating the questions after every page, I will ask the students to inform me when another voice is introduced in the story. I will focus the student's attention on the page that says

Well, Daddy is going to own that building, 'cause I'm gonna fly over it and give it to him. Then it won't matter that he's not in their old union, or whether he's colored or a half-breed Indian, like they say. ¹⁷

Here we see that the author has the protagonist refer to someone else's voice in the last sentence, "like they say." I will ask the students who the "they" are in this passage and what role they play. We will then discuss the issue of belonging to a group.

At this point in the lesson I will divide the students into small groups of three to four students and provide each group with the following questions, which can be found inside the front cover of the paperback edition of Tar Beach: Have you ever wanted to be a part of a group that wouldn't let you join? Do you know why they wouldn't let you? How did you feel? Have you ever been part of a group or a club that wouldn't let other people join? Did you like being part of the group? Why or why not? Why didn't you include certain people? How do you think that made them feel? How did you feel? The students will be given ten minutes to discuss these questions and then report back to the group with a quick oral summary of their discussion. Next, I will finish reading the story, and together we will generate a voice chart as we did with Eve Bunting's books.

The book I will use to compare with Tar Beach is Aunt Harriet's Underground Railroad in the Sky, also by Faith Ringgold. This story continues the flying adventure of Cassie Louise Lightfoot. In this story, however, Cassie takes along her younger brother, BeBe, and they learn about their great-great-grandparents' long journey from slavery to freedom guided by the voice of Harriet Tubman. The themes of home and family take on a new meaning. The slaves are running away from the home they knew, but along the way it is the homes of strangers that provide comfort and security and in the end freedom. In this story Cassie's voice appears to have matured based on the vocabulary she is using to narrate this journey. In order to help build the student's vocabulary, we will use a strategy developed by Marcia Brechtel called a Cognitive Content Dictionary (CCD). ¹⁸ According to Brechtel, the CCD engages students in metacognition. It is a grid that asks students to predict the meaning of the chosen word.