Literature, Life-Writing, and Identity

Approach

This unit is fiercely optimistic about who students are and what they can do. Too often, students in high-poverty schools like mine are consistently and systematically underappreciated for the character, resilience, and brilliance they bring to the classroom. The identity work described here is designed to support the wonderful elements of identity that students already have, especially those parts that are at risk of damage in moments of change. Instead of asking students to adopt new and unfamiliar identity aspects, students celebrate the pieces of their identity that have helped them navigate past changes and imagine a bright, resilient future.

In this unit, students participate in four types of identity work: 1) bibliotherapeutic examination of identity during change, 2) self-affirmation acts, 3) broadening identity stories, and 4) forward-looking stories. Each type of identity work functions as what Hilde Lindemann Nelson calls “counterstory.” Counterstories purposefully disrupt master narratives.¹¹ In counterstories, students can take back self-narration by re-telling their story.

Consider a male student who throws a few punches in a playground tift and suddenly feels like a “bad kid” despite a spotless school record. For a black student, the racist master narrative might explain the incident as inherently violent. While acknowledging the error of throwing punches, the much-needed counterstory can contextualize this incident in a long history of school friendships or point out the self-defense in which the student was engaging. Without the counterstory, the student risks re-interpreting his identity as violent or “bad.”

Bibliotherapy

Bibliotherapy, the use of books to examine situations, actions, and stories of others to make individual meaning, is particularly suited for classroom identity work. In most classrooms, books are far more accessible than school-based therapy and the approach fits nicely with our focus on literature.¹²

Through books, students peek into changing lives and traumatic events of protagonists without being forced to disclose details of their own trauma or change.¹³ Librarian Gina Seymour, who has used bibliotherapy to help students manage grief, notes that the slight distance between reader and subject offers safety to process.¹⁴ In this unit, students follow the Esperanza Rising protagonist as she mourns the loss of her father. Esperanza waffles between anger and debilitating sadness. Throughout the text, she looks for comfort in gifts from her father and in connections to things he loved. By reading about and discussing a character instead of one’s self, students can try out solutions or feelings that they might not be comfortable expressing for themselves.

Bibliotherapy matches text to student experience in order to “frame the conversation around ways that people survive, overcome, and adapt to hardships and challenges.”¹⁵ The three books included in this unit can’t possibly reach the breadth of students’ experience with change but they offer a start. Characters deal with sudden socioeconomic instability, migration, family illness and death, imprisonment, and more. In The Breadwinner, I imagine many students connecting to the family sacrifices that Parvana must make for her family’s economic well-being. Like the student who walks his sisters to school instead of attending his middle-school of choice, Parvana deals with disappointment and anger as she’s thrust into completing chores for her family instead of attending school or playing at home.

Through this unit’s selected texts, students examine how characters respond to changes that reflect the ones they face in real life. Research suggests that the approach can help students cope with issues, solve problems, and promote identity growth.¹⁶

Self-Affirmation Acts

Acts of self-affirmation, the second type of identity work featured in this unit, are stories of self-adequacy that remind students of past experiences, skills, and character traits. The goal is to remind students of what has helped them overcome challenges in the past so they can more confidently face current obstacles. This identity work is particularly helpful during what Cohen & Sherman call “stressful transitions and choice points” or what this unit refers to as moments of “unwanted change.”¹⁷ The simple act of reminding oneself of tackling past challenges or making it through a transition can “bolster coping and resilience for the next adversity.”¹⁸

While most of our self-affirmation work will be done in writing, our texts illustrate that it can be as simple as reminding yourself of past success. In The Breadwinner, Parvana must become increasingly bold in order to make enough money to keep her family afloat. She draws on tiny acts of self-affirmation for courage. Before tackling each new challenge, she reminds herself of her last success. First, it’s just walking to the market to buy bread. When she passes as a boy, she reminds herself of this accomplishment before attempting to continue part of her father’s business in the market. By reminding people of the psychosocial resources at their disposal, acts of self-affirmation accomplish two things: 1) they help put a current threat in context, and 2) they help people deal with a threat rather than simply avoid it.¹⁹

For my students, self-affirmation might be as quick as telling a story of a time a student tried multiple methods to solve a math problem (resilience!) or how the student used a rejection from a writing contest to making improvements on her next submission. For some students, acts of self-affirmation can result in significant academic gain.²⁰ In this unit, students will participate in their own acts of self-affirmation by writing narratives of managing change in the past and reflections on the strengths that have contributed to success in some area of their life.

Broadening Identity Stories

The third type of identity work in this unit is intended to broaden students’ self-concept. A multi-faceted identity offers a buffer to painful change. With a more expansive view of identity, one rejection or failure does not shred the entire narrative tissue.²¹ In the case of the injured student athlete, the pain of a sudden end to her athletic career may be mitigated with a more expansive view of self that includes her familial ties, academic success, and musical skills. Unfortunately, losing sight of a multi-faceted identity is at particular risk during moments of change.²² The student frozen with disappointment when his middle school dreams became impossible may need to remember that in addition to being a high-achieving student, he is also a loyal friend, creative writer, fierce athlete, and valued community member. By remembering that he is more than just a good student, what he interprets as a catastrophic event in one part of his life does not destroy his identity entirely.

In the case of Esperanza Rising, the protagonist is plunged into a new socioeconomic reality. Suddenly, she is no longer distinguishable from her former servants. Now, Esperanza must work alongside people she barely noticed in the past. Eventually, she shapes her identity around more than material wealth. She finds joy in caring for the young children at the migrant camp, in learning new skills, and in having a good attitude during difficult times. By broadening her sense of identity, Esperanza can weather the challenges that life in a new country demands.

Positive Forward-looking Stories

The fourth identity strategy is future-oriented. When Hilde Lindemann Nelson describes identities as narrative tissues, she points out that our understanding of identity stretches into how we imagine the future.²³ These “forward-looking self-constituting stories” dictate not only the way we see our future, but also influence how we act now.²⁴ A student who imagines a future in college, for example, subtly adjusts their current actions in an orientation to her future self.

The opposite seems to be true as well; students with a negative view of their future act differently in the present. In Kristy Matsuda’s study of adolescent gang membership, her team found that a negative future narrative influenced their decisions. Even if they wanted to do well in school, for example, adolescents in her study feared that it wouldn’t work out for them or help their future anyway.²⁵ Identity work to create positive forward-looking stories may be particularly important for youths in high-poverty contexts. Some studies suggest that adolescents with low-socioeconomic status tend to adopt more indifferent attitudes towards their future as an adult including what work they will do.²⁶

Our shared unit texts offer additional examples. In The Breadwinner, Parvana keeps a steady focus on the hope that her father will return and Taliban rule will lighten. In some ways, this idea of the future keeps her moving. She wants her family to be healthy and stable when they welcome her father home. She reads forbidden books because she dreams of the days when she can return to school. For Esperanza, her future hope lies in returning her mother to health and bringing her grandmother to live with her. She learns to work, contribute, and save her meager wages in anticipation of a brighter future. In this unit, students write their own future-oriented stories including a letter in the spirit of Langston Hughes’ “Mother to Son” poem where students imagine the hopeful future their parents wish for their children.

Future-oriented stories are also a chance to counteract master narratives. In a recent Urban Review article, Rodrick Carey describes a low-income student in his study who believed his teachers viewed him as a troublemaker who didn’t turn in much homework. Still, his family believed he could go to college, even though his parents had not been able to.²⁷ Using forward-looking stories, a student like the one described above can draw on community and family belief for the future even in the face of other obstacles.