DIVERSE VOICES FOR DIVERSE EXPERIENCES: WHAT CAN POST-BELLUM, PRE-HARLEM WRITERS TEACH SECONDARY STUDENTS?
Research Article
DIVERSE VOICES FOR DIVERSE EXPERIENCES: WHAT CAN POST-BELLUM, PRE-HARLEM WRITERS TEACH SECONDARY STUDENTS?
ABSTRACT
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o remarked almost forty years ago that “[l]anguage carries culture, and culture
carries, particularly through orature and literature, the entire body of values by which we come to
perceive ourselves and our place in the world [...] at their entire relationship to nature and to
other beings” (1986 [1992], 16). Although his comment originated in post-colonial literary
thought within an East African linguistic context, these words retain increasing significance
today and are more broadly applicable to any sociologically-informed literary discussions in the
American classroom. To this end, the literature of the Post-Bellum, Pre-Harlem (cf. Chesnutt
1931, inter alia) offers a window into the complex sociocultural, historical, and political context
of the United States in the late eighteenth and early twentieth centuries, which had previously
been defined as the Black Nadir. Accordingly, this paper presents the results of a four-week
instructional unit, which took place in a tenth-grade English classroom at a semi-suburban high
school in north-central New Jersey, that required students to read and engage critically with
James Weldon Johnson's (1912 [1927]) The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man. Most
importantly, the present study advocates a departure from ‘interpretation by free association’
(Reader Response Theory) and, instead, proposes a more nuanced understanding of the United
States at the fin de siècle through student-driven questioning of and conversations about the
sociological, cultural, historical, linguistic, and literary dimensions of such works.
SPIER, T.,
(2021). DIVERSE VOICES FOR DIVERSE EXPERIENCES: WHAT CAN POST-BELLUM, PRE-HARLEM WRITERS TEACH SECONDARY STUDENTS?. International Journal of Education and Philology, 2(2), 55-76. Arrival Date Posted By:https://ijep.ibupress.com/articles/diverse-voices-for-diverse-experiences-what-can-post-bellum-pre-harlem-writers-teach-secondary-students-
