Background Knowledge & Content
Zanneta Kubajak’s Yale National Initiative (YNI) unit “Freedom Dreaming: Critical Thought Through Imagination”11 is my inspirational North Star for this part of the project. My questions are also influenced by April Baker-Bell’s inquiries related to Antiracist Black Language Pedagogy:
*What can students learn about themselves through studying oral tradition and their own linguistic traditions?
*How can oral tradition and family interviews inform students’ writing practice and help them explore their writer’s voice?
*How can oral storytelling through culturally relevant lenses contribute to a mentality of resisting and dismantling white supremacy inside and outside of the English classroom?12
These questions help inform the pacing of the unit and how the sections are organized. This unit will be 6-8 weeks and will be divided into three parts. Part One: Remembering Our Stories will hook students’ interest by exploring their background knowledge around their cultures and languages in order to build a personal and relevant connection to oral tradition. Students will explore oral tradition by engaging in a family interview project. Part Two: Retelling Our Stories will demonstrate the evolution of oral tradition through contemporary, culturally relevant texts. Students will begin revising their interviews and start transforming them into narratives. Finally, Part Three: Reclaiming Our Stories will involve steps to finalizing a narrative and final presentation based on the interview. We will celebrate the linguistic and cultural diversity of and solidarity between students through a public display of their work.
Part One: Remembering Our Stories
This section will introduce students to the historical origins and linguistic features of Black Language. I will also introduce oral traditions and explore examples that are both covered and neglected in the curriculum due to white supremacy.
Introduction to Origins of Black Language
In ELA, we read and write in English, but I challenge the basis of this by questioning why we use English in the first place. According to Ethnologue.com, there are approximately “7,159” languages in the world today, and “roughly 44% of all languages are now endangered,” including Nahuat, the native language of my ancestral homeland, El Salvador.13 The number of endangered and extinct languages is a direct result of colonization as settlers prohibited and punished Indigenous people in any colonized place from speaking their languages and practicing any aspect of their cultures. As a result of young people pursuing formal education, Indigenous languages have struggled as they are replaced with learning a colonial language (English, Spanish, or French to name a few). Prakash and Esteva cite an example of the Mocho tribe in Chiapas, Mexico who had “only seventy-five elderly speakers remaining”14; without any language revitalization, the Mocho language will cease to exist, and they note, “The story of Mocho is the story of what happens when the children of a community, pursuing the promises of education, systematically learn to forget the languages of their commons and their communities.”15 This is a crucial foundation and present-day contextualization to studying oral tradition and the origins of Black Language.
On ethnologue.com, zero results populate for the many names that have been given to Black Language, except for African American Vernacular English, a term that has its shortcomings as it classifies Black Language as a dialect rather than a language in its own right. Baker-Bell claims that the history of Black Language is not usually taught to students.16 Smitherman, a prominent scholar of Black Language, writes “[The] lack of knowledge about our history… is at the root of the problem of miseducation of Black youth today. They have no sense of their role and purpose in history, no understanding of where they came from, and consequently, no vision for where they’re going.”17
The Breakdown consults historians and linguists on the origins of Black language in “‘Black English’: How AAVE Developed From Slave Resistance & African Dialects.”18 English has its origins in the Germanic language, but now German vocabulary only makes up about 25% of the language today and 75% comes from other languages, mostly romance languages such as French by way of the Norman Conquest of 1066. 19 The video makes a joke about these influences through the examples of words from German, French, and Spanish mostly being foods. In truth, food holds much linguistic significance as it holds the cultural roots of a people. Words such as “okra”, “yam”, and “gumbo”20 are now predominantly used in the U.S. South, but they have African origins. Dr. Hines-Gaither also points out that “wow” as a word of affirmation can be traced back to the Senegalese language.21 Although the video does not point this out, Lisa Green’s book African American English: A Linguistic Introduction features an extensive study on the grammar rules and African origins of Black Language. She notes the similarities in the use of “dǝn” in Black Language and “don” in Guyanese Creole.22 Furthermore, these grammatical patterns across English creoles “from Gullah to Jamaican Creole, and to Krio, the dominant language of Sierra Leone” as they all demonstrate features such as: “the absence of the linking verb be (e.g., You ugly), the loss of inflection suffixes such as the –s on verbs (e.g. She like school), possessives (e.g., the dog_ mouth), and plurals (many time_), as well as the distinctive verb particles such as the use of done to indicate completed action (e.g., He done went) and the use of been to indicate distant time (e.g., She been known him forever).”23 These are all consistent grammatical rules that show African lineages across vast distances that spanned the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade.
Anthony Browder, Kemetologist and renowned historian, connects the phonetics or speech sounds of Black English to the speech patterns that enslaved Africans heard from the “poor folks who were the overseers on the concentration camps that they call plantations.” 24 Baker-Bell also charts these sound features in figure 4.3 where “dey” is how “they” sounds and “dem” is how “them” sounds.25 These sound features of Black English can be traced back to the English spoken by the poor colonizers from “the British isles, from Scotland, from Ireland”, but Browder emphasizes that although Black people had to adopt this “oppressive language”, they infused African culture into it “to give feeling and soul to this language.” 26 Toni Morrison is a prolific Black author who often discussed the role of linguistic racism on anti-blackness: “The language, only the language… It is the thing that Black people love so much - the saying of words, holding them on the tongue, experimenting with them, playing with them. It’s a love, a passion. Its function is like a preacher’s: to make you stand up out of your seat, make you lose yourself and hear yourself. The worst of all possible things that could happen would be to lose that language.”27 In classrooms, among family members, at jobs, and in public spaces, Black people are being told to lose this language and use White Mainstream English, and this violence is cruelly ironic.
Enslaved Africans were forced to adopt the oppressor’s language as all aspects of their African cultures including language were prohibited even before they embarked on the horrific journey across the Atlantic Ocean. Baker-Bell cites John Baugh who elaborates on this in his article, Use and misuse of speech diagnostics for African American students, “slave traders routinely separated slaves by language whenever possible upon capture. This practice of isolating recent captives who shared a common language was intended to minimize uprisings; if [enslaved Africans] had a harder time communicating, they were less likely to be able to organize revolts… Moreover, this linguistic isolation began in West Africa prior to the Atlantic crossing, and as a result of these efforts, no African language survived the Atlantic crossing completely intact.”28 Black English has become the native tongue for African Americans and carries in its cadence the sounds of African languages, even though those origins are difficult to fully trace back as a result of the violence of slavery. Additionally, it is important to note that although this linguistic isolation did create challenges for enslaved Africans to coordinate revolts, that does not mean that they did not rebel throughout the course of slavery. This rebellion is seeded throughout slavery and throughout the formation of Black English such as through their coded language within spirituals and Black church. Coded language in Negro spirituals such as Wade in the Water, Swing Low Sweet Chariot, and Steal Away to Jesus was an elaborate way for enslaved Africans to safely communicate messages that they didn’t want white people to understand. These spirituals often shared messages of escape.29
Robin Alva Marcus, professor and word artist, explains a grammatical tense not used in White Mainstream English which is the use of the “to be” word to signify three tenses at once: indefinite, continual, and occasional.30 Black Language has its own rules and patterns distinct from White Mainstream English that are often diminished, but their origins must be studied. To denounce Black Language as an uneducated dialect is to uphold anti-blackness. To prevent Black students from using their native tongue, regardless of the setting, is to perpetuate violence against them.
Oral Tradition: Coverage and Uncoverage
Oral tradition is the oldest form of story transmission. I want my students to understand that a key feature of oral tradition is “the practice of passing down cultural legacies, history, and knowledge through spoken word.”31 Storytellers are crucial to this practice, and I want them to see themselves as storytellers, historians, and ethnographers as they record and retell their family stories. As I introduce students to the practices of oral tradition, I want them to reflect on the significance of culture by using the chart called “The Tree of Culture in Ethnic Studies Pedagogy / CxRxPx”.32 I will ask them to describe what they notice about the chart. They will notice that it is in the shape of a tree which is sectioned into three parts: surface culture, shallow culture, and deep culture. The surface culture is depicted as leaves on the branches. These leaves represent observable artifacts in culture.33 Often, these are treated as additive aspects when discussing or learning about a culture and subsequently carry low emotional impact. There may be little education behind the purpose or history of these observable artifacts. I will ask my students to consider their own culture and give examples for as many of the topics noted on the leaves as they can think of. Then, I will ask them to consider the video by The Breakdown.34 We will use spirituals as an example. They are songs, but they carry deep cultural significance when we consider the purpose for these spirituals and their ability to transmit a belief system for enslaved people through coded language. They will write on at least one observable artifact within their own culture and unearth its deeper roots. Often, we become severed from these roots because white supremacy has intentionally severed us from our traditional stories that we would have received from oral tradition.
Oral tradition, like much of the content taught in schools, is presented as a distant concept that can be difficult for students to relate to or find personal relevance in. Maloy and LaRoche outline a framework for teaching democratically by beginning with contrasting the required curriculum and readings with material that is not covered. They explain that through “curriculum uncoverage,” teachers can include content from marginalized communities in “substantive and transformative ways.”35 I will engage my students in this process of curriculum coverage and uncoverage. We will watch and discuss a video called “A Brief History of Spoken Word Poetry”36 on the history of oral tradition as it relates to spoken word, a type of poetry that students may be familiar with and enjoy. Spoken word poetry, like other forms of oral tradition, was originally passed down orally between generations “as a way to share stories, traditions, and history.”37 The video reviews Homer’s Greek epic, The Iliad38, and one of our required texts that is covered in the curriculum around oral tradition is The Odyssey, a sequel to The Iliad, which is taught along with Greek mythology. Greek mythology is frequently taught throughout K-12, so I will pair this with uncovered content and ask students if they have ever learned about Native American or African mythology in school.
The West African griots are not taught in our ELA curriculum, so we will explore their role in society. Negro spirituals carry African origins in their ability to tell stories through songs just as West African griots do.39 Griots are oral historians, storytellers, singers, and musicians for their communities, and this role is passed down a family through generations.40 People are born into this role that teaches their community and preserves those teachings for the next generation. Alhaji Papa Susso, a griot, shares that if someone in the griot lineage decided to not practice their storytelling role for their community, then that tradition cannot continue and will be lost.41
Slam Out Loud notes the works of William Shakespeare42, which are often covered in our curriculum. In ninth grade, Romeo and Juliet is a required text. I will ask my students if they have heard of this play or Shakespeare before. Meanwhile, the video also mentions contemporary U.S. based movements that are not required reading in ninth grade: Harlem Renaissance, Beat Generation, and the Black Arts Movement.43 All these movements were highly influential in developing the music that students listen to today such as hip-hop and rap, but their historical origins are not often taught about. Students will research and explore key figures from these movements. For example, the video notes prominent Harlem Renaissance artists such as Louis Armstrong, Langston Hughes, and Billie Holiday.44 For the Beat Generation, examples include Allen Ginsberg and Frank O’Hara45, and there are Black Beat poets that should not be forgotten about such as Bob Kaufman46 and Amiri Baraka.47 Finally, regarding the Black Arts Movement, the video shares Nina Simone, Angela Davis, and Maya Angelou as key figures.48 Students will explore examples of spoken word that are covered and not covered in the curriculum and share their research with each other. Then, we will discuss the impact of learning the diverse history of oral tradition. Freire shares, “Students, as they are increasingly posed with problems relating to themselves in the world and with the world, will feel increasingly challenged and obliged to respond to that challenge.”49 Through critically analyzing the content that is covered and not covered in the curriculum. We are learning about the past that is included in the curriculum in order to respond to that history by changing the status quo.
Family Interviews with StoryCorps
A family interview project is very personal to me. It is one of the few projects assigned to me in high school that I still vividly remember. I will share with my students my own work around family interviews such as the narrative I wrote about my interview with my mom where she shared her experience fleeing El Salvador during the Civil War and migrating to the U.S. and the audio recording with my maternal grandmother about her childhood. I will discuss with my students the impact of family interviews and how these interviews should foster social justice and liberation. I will ask them about the kind of news that they hear about immigrants or about El Salvador. Right now, there is a campaign of terror against the migrant community and El Salvador is aiding in this dehumanizing violence. We will connect this systemic violence against immigrants to the historic violence still being committed against Black and Indigenous people in the U.S. With these contexts in mind, we will explore how StoryCorps uses their platform to meet this moment by empowering people to share their stories in an effort “to pass wisdom from one generation to the next, and to leave a legacy for the future.”50 We will explore counter-narratives under the “Brightness in Black” project which shares the stories of Black people and how this process of retelling personal stories deepens our connection to history and to each other.
Before listening to any stories, we will first watch the video “Trabian Shorters on Asset Framing” in order to address issues of bias, stigma, and stereotypes.51 Shorters observes that StoryCorps, “Brightness in Black” in particular, uses asset framing by focusing on people’s assets and aspirations as they change the way someone thinks about themselves, how others think about that person, and finally, the systems we live under which are designed to be oppressive.52 Focusing on challenges or deficits can stigmatize a marginalized person and not allow them to be portrayed as a full human being. We can refer back to Anti-racist Black Language as an example. Under white supremacy, Black Language is portrayed as an informal, broken English which deprives Black Language and its native speakers of the full, rich history of resilience and ingenuity that created Black Language. Shorters says, “If human beings are genuinely narrative-driven, then the stories you tell will create the lives you live.”53 If a teacher tells students that Black Language sounds uneducated and to avoid using it, then that student may internalize that narrative. However, when Black Language is humanized and taught accurately, that can challenge the dominant narrative that reinforces anti-blackness and can free the mind from that anti-black narrative.
As a class, we will take into consideration this notion of asset framing while listening to one of the “Brightness in Black” stories before they search for and analyze stories on the website on their own. I will ask students to share their ideas on the features that make a story memorable and impactful. We will discuss their ideas and the importance of character development, vivid details, and a relatable human experience or conflict. We will listen to a woman share a story about her older brother Bill, the person who had the biggest impact on her growing up.54 This is a human experience that teens can relate to because they could also name a family member or person who has had the greatest impact on their lives. The woman tells us details about her brother like his ability to finish a book in 30 minutes and share the contents of the book. She tells a short but descriptive story about how Bill taught both her and her other brother how to play chess. These details describe Bill’s assets through images. She tells us that Bill was very intelligent, and then she shows us, and it is the details of the story that will stick in a person’s mind. I will ask students to explore the vast variety of programs on the StoryCorps website and describe the memorable features of the stories they find. This exercise will help students to retell stories. Additionally, they will think about the person they want to interview and the kind of questions that will guide the interview and turn it into a story that needs to be shared with the world.
For their family interviews, students will use the examples and information we have reviewed to help them reflect on the purpose of their family interview and respond to the following questions that are from Voice of Witness’s teacher’s guide called The Power of the Story.55
*Who do you want to interview that can tell a great story?
*How will the interview be recorded?
*What is the final form that you want for your interview?
It is crucial to clarify with students that the meaning of family is up to the student to decide. In Riechel’s “Our Oral History Narrative Project” the teacher recounts experiences with different students who encountered challenges around completing their family interviews, so it will be important to frequently check in with students and “prepare individual game plans for them.”56 Students will have a variety of platforms to choose from such as StoryCorps app, Tik Tok, Soundtrap, Padlet, or any voice memo app that students prefer. Time to explore the various platforms will allow students to decide how they want to record their interview. Their interview will be the first phase of their project, and they will evolve it through revising steps in order to transform it into their final form which can look like a prose narrative, a spoken word poem, a video narrative, a song, and other creative forms.
Part Two - Retelling Our Stories
In this section, I will discuss with students how oral storytelling has evolved as a result of colonization’s effects on language production and technological advances.
Oral History and Storytelling in “Dear Mama” by 2Pac
I will ask my students to re-tell a story about a family member, or someone that they are close to, as a way to engage their lived experiences. This prompt also may begin to clarify ideas about who students may want to interview for their project. Before beginning a text, I ask my students if they are familiar with the author. Students can share their background knowledge and teach their peers or may learn about the author if they are unfamiliar. Tupac “2Pac” Amaru Shakur was a Black hip-hop artist, actor, and activist. He was named after the Incan revolutionary, Túpac Amaru II, because his mother “wanted him to have the name of revolutionary, indigenous people in the world. I wanted him to know he was part of a world culture and not just from a neighborhood.”57 He is the son of Afeni Shakur and step-son of Mulutu Shakur, two prolific activists involved in the Black Panther Party.58 His notoriety largely comes from his music, but his ties to the Black Panther Party may be less familiar—diminishing his political activism and reducing him to his criminal history.
My students and I will look at the title of the song “Dear Mama”59 and make inferences about the tone that this title alludes to. Mama is derived from the English “mother,” but it is also how Latinos may refer to their moms in a more casual manner in Spanish than “madre.” The title suggests that the song is a vulnerable or emotionally-charged letter for the speaker’s mom. The song opens with an interview of his mother relaying the events leading up to Tupac’s birth to an unknown interviewer. Afeni Shakur’s interview should be explored after students have had a chance to engage with the song. She was a member of the Harlem chapter of the Black Panther Party (BPP) where she helped start the free breakfast program for children, supported tenants with rent strikes against slumlords, and organized other grassroots initiatives.60 She was arrested under false charges with 20 other BPP members in a trial known as the “Panther 21” as part of the FBI’s COINTELPRO (counter-intelligence program) which aimed to disrupt and destroy political organizations. After serving a total of 11 months in jail, Afeni successfully defended herself, and all the Panthers were acquitted of all charges.61
The interview clip in the song does not disclose the details about why Tupac’s mother was in jail (although it is alluded to through newspaper cuttings shown in the music video) before the song transitions to the first verse: “When I was young me and my mama had beef/ 17 years old kicked out on the streets / Though back at the time, I never thought I’d see her face / Ain’t a woman alive that could take my mama’s place.” The song, like much of hip-hop, is a personal narrative told in a first person point of view. Tupac shares about his challenging childhood, his complex relationship with his mom, and his own shortcomings, but the song ultimately highlights the deep love and admiration that he has for his mom. He uses juxtaposition to humanize his mom. For example, “And even as a crack fiend, Mama / you always was a Black queen, Mama.” Here, 2Pac stresses that he appreciates and values his mother through her challenges with drug addiction. He does not reduce her to this singular aspect of her life as that would stigmatize her in a white supremacist world, and this is a narrative that 2Pac then has to battle through in subsequent interviews about his mother. He shares descriptive details about his mother’s caring behavior such as “and I could see you coming home after work late / you’re in the kitchen tryna fix us a hot plate” and “and Mama made miracles every Thanksgiving.” He repeats “and” to begin many of his examples of the “sweet things” his mom did for him to demonstrate that it is a long list of actions. Additionally, 2Pac uses Black Language throughout the song with his syntax and semantics.62 Within hip-hop, Black Language is readily used as a contemporary coded language in the lineage of spirituals. For instance, “you always was” and “ain’t” are examples of Black Language syntax and some semantic examples are “beef” and “stay real.” Students can use “Dear Mama” as an example of the final shape that their family interview can take as they revise it into a narrative. For Black students, it can be an example to encourage Black Language in their work.
Indigenous Storytelling with Rigoberta Menchú
Before reading the beginning of I, Rigoberta Menchú: An Indian Woman in Guatemala, I will show a short documentary about Rigoberta Menchú. She is a renowned Nobel Peace Prize-winner and Maya K'iche' (also seen spelled as Quiché) woman. It’s likely that Guatemalan students know who she is since she appears on their currency called the Quetzal, a fact that I learned from students. Pananueva is a French channel on Youtube made by six European filmmakers who travel through Central America on a school bus to produce their documentaries.63 The video has Spanish audio and English subtitles, so it is a multilingual source that offers students a more accurate depiction of Central America. The documentary is made by multilingual European filmmakers to share the story of a multilingual Indigenous human rights activist who had to learn Spanish. A central element to culturally relevant pedagogy, Ethnic Studies in particular, is that all the languages should be considered and treated as an asset and should not be disparaged or dismissed for the sake of learning English. It is imperative that teachers make an effort to integrate the native languages of their students as learning tools, not simply for the sake of translating from English but to develop and empower all students’ cultural and linguistic identities. Language is a part of culture, and language preserves and ensures the perpetuity of culture.
The documentary captures the breathtaking landscapes of Guatemala as well as the people who continue to preserve their Indigenous heritage. Throughout the video, you will see women in huipiles and cortes, the traditional dress. The footage moves between the geography of Guatemala, its local communities, and Menchú throughout the short documentary. I will ask students to analyze the purpose of this storytelling decision. It has much to do with the fact that Indigenous people are inextricably connected to their land as well as their people, which Menchú shares in her story.
I, Rigoberta Menchú: An Indian Woman in Guatemala opens with a Translator’s Note and Introduction by the editor which is significant to review for the purposes of reflecting on how some students may need to do their own translating for their family interviews that will be edited into personal narratives.64 Ann Wright translated the story from Spanish to English and Elisabeth Burgos-Debray interviewed and edited Menchú’s story. Wright notes that the Spanish language is not itself fully authentic to capturing Menchú’s voice since she has had to learn “the language of the culture which oppresses her in order to fight it - to fight for her people - and to help us understand her own world.”65 This fact will also be emphasized in the Introduction, so I will highlight this for students to reflect on how linguistic oppression affects them and their family members.
Given Menchú’s multilingual background, this informed Wright’s choices with her translation. She decided to keep “repetitions, tense irregularities, and sometimes convoluted sentences which come from Rigoberta’s search to find the right expression in Spanish.” These linguistic features authentically represent this Native American Indigenous woman’s acquisition of a colonial language which carries influences of “linguistic constructions of her native Quiché.” Additionally, she left words in Spanish or Quiché due to a lack of a precise equivalent in English such as “compañero” - which can mean ‘companion’ in Spanish - and how this word has an evolutionary meaning for Menchú as she becomes more politicized and involved in the struggle against oppression. The translator’s choices serve to most accurately capture Menchú’s oral story and her purpose behind sharing it. This can serve as a reminder for multilingual students to consider using their native languages in their narratives as a way to preserve the cultural features in their family member’s story.
Chapter one is titled “The Family”. I will ask students to consider who is included in Menchú’s notion of family. Additionally, we will analyze the epigraph from the Popol Vuh, which students will have been introduced to as the Mayan oral tradition, and it begins, “‘We have always lived here: we have the right to go on living where we are happy and where we want to die.’”66 This passage refers to native land, so the inclusion of the Mayan sacred text referencing their sacred land in the first chapter about family creates the connection that land is also seen as family. Menchú focuses on her nuclear family’s experiences, but she also explains how her and her family’s experiences are the experiences of Indigenous people throughout Guatemala. She notes, “My personal experience is the reality of a whole people.”67 These Indigenous notions of including land and her whole people as part of her family will recur throughout the text.
While analyzing the content of Menchú’s story, we’ll also analyze the manner in which the story was told and subsequently how it was transcribed. I will ask students to describe the sentence length and syntax. The sentences tend to be short, which serves as a reflection of Menchú’s relationship to Spanish and how it is a language she has recently learned. The syntax or arrangement of words and phrases reflect both her native Quiché as well as her level of fluency in Spanish. Typically, language learners transfer the syntactical rules of their native language to the language they are acquiring until they have learned the grammatical rules of that language. We’ll also explore how her worldview informs her details. Her details tend to begin from a birds-eye view as she begins parts of the story by observing the general facts of the “twenty-two indigenous ethnic groups in Guatemala, twenty-three including the mestizos, or ladinos” to orient the reader to the diverse populations in Guatemala; by the end of the same paragraph, she is describing her village of Chimel as a “paradise” and “beautiful” where there are “no big roads, no cars” and the mountain can only be traveled by foot or horse.67 Her details around nature and the land reflect her Quiché worldview. Her meandering storytelling spirals around her customs, her family history, the history of her people, their relationship to the land, and the reasons for the suffering of Indigenous people. Her storytelling is not exactly linear as she weaves together each of these components of her life to one another.
Part Three - Reclaiming Our Stories
The final section will include an example of creating a narrative based on the family interview. Students can use this example among the others explored in the previous sections to help them revise their interview and shape it into its final form. The unit will conclude with a decolonized multicultural celebration on the linguistic and cultural diversity of and solidarity between students through a public display of their projects with other students, school staff, families, and community members. Students will review the Voice of Witness’s checklist.68
StoryCorps Interview and Animated Narrative
I want students to reflect and discuss the experience of doing family interviews. They can share about the people they chose to interview, what their family members shared, or anything that they learned from the process. Additionally, we can talk about the final forms that students want to work on for their interviews. I also plan to hold conferences for students to share their creative process with me in a one-on-one format to ensure that I hear from everyone and that all students feel supported.
Prior to listening to the story from StoryCorps, we will review craft elements that we’ve discussed as essential to a memorable story. It’s important to reiterate that these stories should continue to be shared down generations as is the custom with oral tradition. Sometimes we forget why we’re doing what we’re doing and need a reminder! Bishop Ricardo Ramirez shared a story about his abuela Panchita with StoryCorps which they turned into an animated narrative.69 There is a transcript available of the interview for students to refer to, but I will ask them to listen to Bishop Ramirez tell his story first and mentally annotate any parts of the story that stand out or demonstrate a craft element such as “voice, imagery, characterization, and arrangement.”70
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