Annotated Bibliography
Teacher Resources
Alexander, Elizabeth. “Butter.” In The Hungry Ear: Poems of Food & Drink, edited by Kevin Young, 54. New York: Bloomsbury, 2012. This is a great poem to introduce food-themed poetry.
Baldwin, James. “A Letter to My Nephew.” The Progressive, January 1, 1962. Accessed August 8, 2017. http://progressive.org/magazine/letter-nephew/. Baldwin’s letter is strikingly relevant today and great for comparing and contrasting with contemporary texts.
Baldwin, James. Notes of a Native Son. New York: The Dial Press, 1963. This collection of Baldwin’s essays could be excerpted or read in their entirety.
Cisneros, Sandra. The House on Mango Street. New York: Vintage Contemporaries, 2009. Cisneros’s novel is broken down into mostly short, digestible chapters that work well as mentor texts.
Coates, Ta-Nehisi. Between the World and Me. New York: Spiegel & Grau, 2015. Coates’s work as a whole might be a little too dense for struggling readers, but can be excerpted and discussed to aide comprehension.
Crenshaw, Kimberlé. “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics.” The University of Chicago Legal Forum, Vol. 1989 (1989): 139-167. This is the journal paper in which Kimberlé Crenshaw first coins and explains the term “intersectionality.”
DiAngelo, Robin. “White Fragility.” International Journal of Critical Pedagogy, Vol. 3 (3) (2011): 54-70. DiAngelo’s essay explains American racism and how white people are often complicit in maintaining the system of oppression.
Emba, Christine. “Intersectionality.” The Washington Post, September 21, 2015. Accessed August 17, 2017. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/in-theory/wp/2015/09/21/intersectionality-a-primer/. This is an easily digestible primer on intersectionality.
Erikson, Erik H. Identity and the Life Cycle. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1980. Erikson’s theories help educators and students understand the developmental psychology behind identity formation.
Erikson, Erik H. Identity: Youth and Crisis. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1968. Erikson’s earlier work conceptualizes adolescent identity and crisis.
Gallagher, Kelly. Write Like This: Teaching Real-World Writing Through Modeling & Mentor Texts. Portland, ME: Stenhouse Publishers, 2011. Gallagher justifies and provides lessons for teaching writing through mentor texts.
Holladay, Sailor. “Filling.” In Without a Net: The Female Experience of Growing Up Working Class, edited by Michelle Tea, 75-78. Emeryville, CA: Seal Press, 2003. “Filling” is a short, digestible essay that could easily be read and discussed in one class period.
McGrath, Campbell. “Capitalist Poem #5.” The Hungry Ear: Poems of Food & Drink, edited by Kevin Young, 84. New York: Bloomsbury, 2012. This poem is another food-themed poem to share with students as a potential mentor text.
Nelson, Hilde Lindemann. Damaged Identities, Narrative Repair. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011. This is a philosophical text about identity.
Rankine, Claudia. Citizen: An American Lyric. Minneapolis, MN: Graywolf Press, 2014. Rankine’s powerful genre-bending work can be excerpted and also features scripts for her “situation videos” which would spark excellent classroom discussions.
Vance, J. D. Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis. New York: HarperCollins, 2016. Vance’s memoir is about growing up as an Appalachian hillbilly in Ohio and Kentucky.
Washington, Booker T. “An Address on Abraham Lincoln.” Speech, Republican Club of New York City, New York, NY, February 12, 1909. Accessed August 8, 2017. http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/an-address-on-abraham-lincoln/. Booker T. Washington’s speech is a great way to introduce the roots of contemporary race issues and social justice.
Young, Kevin, ed. The Hungry Ear: Poems of Food & Drink. New York: Bloomsbury, 2012. Kevin Young edited and contributed to this anthology of food-themed poetry.
Student Resources
Alexie, Sherman. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2007. In this novel, the main character struggles with his identity as a Native American who leaves the reservation to go to a majority-white school.
Draper, Sharon. Out of My Mind. New York: Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2010. In this novel, which would be good for struggling readers, a fifth-grader with cerebral palsy and a photographic memory finds a way to speak for the first time.
Flake, Sharon. The Skin I’m In. New York: Jump at the Sun / Hyperion Paperbacks for Children, 2007. Thirteen-year-old Maleeka is bullied because of her dark skin, but learns to love herself and how she looks.
Myers, Walter Dean. Monster. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1999. Monster is required reading for ninth-graders in my district, and would also be a great choice for small-group novel studies.
Reynolds, Jason. When I Was the Greatest. New York: Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2014. This novel would likely appeal to reluctant male readers.
Reynolds, Jason, and Brendan Kiely. All American Boys. New York: Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2015. This novel is told from the perspectives of two boys who experience an incident of police brutality. One boy is the black victim, and the other is the white witness.
Russo, Meredith. If I Was Your Girl. New York: Flatiron Books, 2016. This is a novel about a male-to-female transsexual who moves to a new school and tries to keep her identity a secret until she connects with someone and wants to tell him everything about herself.
Sáenz, Benjamin Alire. Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe. New York: Simon & Schuster BFYR, 2012. This beautiful novel is ideal for LGBTQ or questioning students.
Thomas, Angie. The Hate U Give. New York: Balzer + Bray, 2017. In this novel, the sixteen-year-old protagonist lives two lives: one in her low-income neighborhood and one in the suburban private school. Her life changes when she witnesses a police officer murder her childhood friend. The subjects of police brutality, protests, activism, and poverty make this book extremely relevant and engaging.
Williams-Garcia, Rita. Jumped. New York: Amistad, 2009. This novel tells the story of the events leading up to a fight from the points-of-view of three different teenage girls.
Woodson, Jacqueline. Brown Girl Dreaming. New York: Puffin Books, 2016. This is an autobiographical novel in verse based on Woodson’s childhood as an African American girl growing up in the 1960s and 1970s. It is great for younger or struggling readers.
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