Thoughts on: The Book Thief

This book is, by far, my favorite book so far this semester. I became emotionally involved with these characters. It took me about a week to finish it, and each night I would be anxious to see what happened to Rudy and Liesel. I saw all of the forshadowing, and "Death" even comes outright and talks about parts of the ending, but in my mind, I still hoped that somehow everything would turn out alright.

I wonder how many stories from the point of the Germans during World War II there are. It almost seemed strange, because I have this perception that all of the Germans were in on it from the beginning. Most books focus on those who are being dominated by the Germans who step out and try to help someone else being even more oppressed, but I guess I never thought about it happening in Germany, too. I became sympathetic towards the town and its people. Even Rudy, who wasn't even in on the plot to save the Jewish man, was a sympathetic character. I think the author used children as the main characters because we are more likely to see them as innocent and sympathetic while we might automatically assume that the adults were already corrupted by Nazism.

I also found the narrator--Death--to be absolutely fascinating. He is omniscient in that he is outside of the story, and so his blunt details about what will happen and what he will see is incredibly effective. In the end, I struggled with how the whole street could be blown to bits-it frustrated me to no end. Why would the author even create Rudy if he was going to kill him off in the end? Why does he spend so much time letting us get aquainted with that character who wants to be a runner and who likes to get into trouble with Liesel and who is her ever faithful friend (though he wants to kiss her) if he is just going to be another casualty? But this is relevant to the war that is going on around them. How many children, even younger than Rudy, died during the war? How many were forced to join the army and fight for something they didn't even understand or believe in? Who is it that said "war is hell" ? So often, I think of World War II from the position of a spectator who isn't even personally connected with it. This book is perfect for people who need to see it as something that is relevant and personal. I think students would find it difficult to deal with at first--it is a hard and depressing subject--but if we ignore the issue, we may find ourselves back there in the first place.

I was reading my book report book and the author talked about how he taught the book "Night." He got in contact with the local synagogue and found out that some of the survivors from the Holocaust were living nearby. The teacer contacted the woman, and even though she had never spoken about her experience after the fact, she wanted to talk to the class because she had heard some people say that what happened to her had never really happened. One of the most touching parts of this story was when the kids asked to touch her arm--and the numbers tattoed on it from the Nazi camp. Something they had heard about was now something they could experience.

If I were teaching this, I would think about showing a few clips from the movie "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas." It is also a very sad story, but again, it is told from the perspective of a German family. The mother first tries to ignore the fact that her husband is running a concentration camp--and many lies are told about how it is really a "work camp" and how the Jews are benefitting from it--but they experience its horror first hand. (I won't give away the ending in case someone hasn't seen this movie yet).

Thoughts on: American Born Chinese

First of all, I had a blast reading “American Born Chinese” by Gene Luen Yang. I think that Yang touches on several incredibly important and relevant subject that we as teachers are going to deal with. Students, whether in elementary, middle, high school, or college are constantly re-evaluating themselves and trying to figure out who they are. I am 23 years old, and I am still no closer to figuring out who I am than I was as a five year old asking my mom if I could be an astronaut, a ballerina, a pianist, and a singer or if she could turn my older sister and I into twins. Ironically, the one thing I never wanted to be while I was growing up was a teacher, but that’s beside the point. If there is one thing I have learned this year—thanks to Dr. Galioto’s Psychoanalytic approach to 19th century American Literature—it is that identity is an endlessly complicated idea. We can have as many theoretical approaches to discovering how each person develops their own identity as we want, but there will never be one simple equation that tells us exactly how we form our identity. In the novel, Jin Wang has to grapple with the idea of becoming his true self—which firsts requires him figuring out who that true self is. Is he just the boy that his classmates see? No. There is clearly so much more to him than what others see—especially since most can’t see past the label of FOB (fresh of the boat) even though he was born in America. Is he simply whoever he believes himself to be? No, if that were true, he would only be “Danny”. So then who is Jin Wang? I think that identity is a learning and developing process. The things we experience now are all a part of who we become, but they aren’t the only part. And while we clearly make decisions about who we are and who we become, that isn’t the only part either.

Identity is obviously not the only, or even main focus in the novel. Something that we will all have to deal with as teachers is stereotypes that we have, and that other students have. It would be so easy for me to write this post by condemning American youth for not being tolerant, but where are they getting this attitude? At least in part by emulating the adults that they are around. I feel like such a bad “teacher in training” for saying this, but I am constantly having to check my own feelings and thoughts because, whether based on race, gender, sexuality, I know that I make assumptions about people. Often times I am not even aware of what my silent actions say about what I am feeling. Students are incredibly in tune with subtle messages that we send, and as much as much as we like to think that as long as we are not outright in our prejudices, assumptions, (the name doesn’t matter much), kids pick up on these things. I like what John Gaughan says in his article “Cultural Reflections: Critical Teaching and Learning in the English Classroom.” He writes, “I think most of the classroom communities I’ve worked in since have been healthy places, but had to battle my own prejudices and experiences to construct those environments" (13). In “American Born Chinese,” Jin’s teacher doesn’t even try to get his name right. It may be a gross exaggeration—and I hope it is—but what kind of message does that send to the child and to the other students? That this one kid isn’t important? That if the teacher isn’t even bothering with him, why should they? Alright, I’m done preaching. I appreciated Gaughan’s honesty about how he developed as a teacher, and his descriptions of the various teachers at the beginning were very interesting.

The format of “American Born Chinese” is a breath of fresh air, if you will forgive the cliché. I seriously laughed at such a format when I first bought the book. Twenty minutes into it, I was so engrossed that I forgot to start dinner and had to convince my husband to take me out to eat. I think this book would be a great companion to books about identity (maybe with “The Importance of Being Earnest”—I know, I know, a weird combination if you think about it only from the prejudice stand point, but the idea of identity being so created and confusing is pretty similar). Or even Twain’s “Pudd’nhead Wilson” which explores the ideas of race, stereotypes, and identity. ("Pudd'nhead Wilson" is seriously my new favorite book! Um, I haven’t finished it yet, so don’t hold me to that!) In any case, I think "American Born Chinese" would be a fun book to teach. Its a great jumping off point for a variety of topics, and I think a lot of students would really enjoy it.

Thoughts on: Monster

I really enjoyed “Monster”. As I read, I felt more and more like the jury trying to figure out if Steve was guilty or innocent. I think what I appreciated most was that Myers did not give you a clear answer as to Steve’s guilt. No, I didn’t want him to go to jail. His comments about the horrors of being in jail made me sympathetic. After all, he is just a 16 year old boy. Why should he have to spend the rest of his youth in jail? If he got out in 23 years, he would be in his thirties! That means that the entirety of his twenties would be spent in a cell. He would never get a chance to experience life, date, have fun, make something of himself. At the same time, a crime was committed. If Steve was a part of that, he should be held accountable—even if he didn’t pull the trigger. Steve lies on the stand doesn’t he? Myers blurs many of the details. We learn from the sections that describe jail and what he is thinking that Steve was in the store. However, we also know from Bobo that Steve didn’t give any signal at all—which the two men took to mean that it was all clear. What a hard issue to deal with, and what a hard decision for the jury to make! I certainly don’t envy them their job.

At first I wasn’t sure of the connection between the article and the book. Sure, race comes up a little bit in the novel. Steve’s mom asks if they should have gotten a Black lawyer. One of the witnesses admits that she has a hard time testifying against a Black defendant. I guess that where a multi-cultural reading would come in is in where Steve was raised. He must attend a decent enough school—if he has the opportunity to take a film class. But it is clear that gangs are a part of his every day life. He is very aware of Osvaldo’s choice of friends. If Steve lived in a ritzy part of the suburbs, would he have gotten into this situation in the first place? Maybe. I am reading Mark Twain’s novel Puddn’head Wilson for another class. In this book, two boys are switched as babies. One is a slave (though he is only 1/32 Black) and the other is 100% White. No one except for the woman who switched these children knows that the “Black” child is the one who becomes educated and stands to inherit quite a fortune. But then, no one knows that the other child, who is uneducated and whose language is identical to the other slaves, is actually White. In this way, Twain breaks down the barriers of stereotypes that insisted that African Americans were slaves because they were stupid or incapable of learning. It becomes obvious that the environment played a key role in how far an African American slave could go. Now, I’m not suggesting that just because Steve is from a rough area and grew up seeing gangs and surrounded by people who were violent that he should be exempt from the laws that govern our country. Nor am I suggesting that the prosecution is targeting Steve because he is Black. What I am saying is that we must consider how environment affects who we become. There will always be those who are able to go beyond what everyone expects of them. Being from a rough area doesn’t guarantee that you will never get out or make something of yourself, but it will always be a part of how you become who you become.