writer of all sorts of things but especially for young adults
I bit my tongue a lot during the two weeks I stayed with Grandma.
I didn’t, for example, tell her that my dad got bit by a dog while he was in Ecuador. She would have worried, and worried even more to know that he was undergoing rabies treatment. Continue reading ‘The Grandma Saga Ends in Victory’
“College socializes you, so you learn to present even trite ideas well. –Elyse Graham, in Chris Hedge’s latest article “The Best and the Brightest Led America Over a Cliff”
My previous post about The Cool Kids reminded me of the panel I organized for REFORMA’s National Conference in September. The panel consisted of the only 3 y.a. writers that I am aware of who have ever had a published young adult novel set in El Paso, Texas–J.L. Powers (me), Benjamin Alire Saenz, and Claudia Guadalupe Martinez; more depressing still, or perhaps more exhilarating still if you want to be unique, we are among only a handful-and-a-half of y.a. writers who have set our novels on the U.S.-Mexico Border. We were discussing why there are so few novels for teenagers that are set on the peripheries of our nation. Now, by peripheries, I don’t mean necessarily the borders, because teenagers in Minnesota are still growing up in mainstream society, whereas teenagers in El Paso are definitely not!
Benjamin Alire Saenz began to get quite excited as he discussed how the gatekeepers in the book world–agents, editors, publishers, and then librarians, teachers, and booksellers–have ghettoized literature about latinos set in a predominantly latino world such as El Paso. He mentioned how one of his books received a review that said something like “even though Saenz’s novel is set in El Paso, its themes resonate with the human condition, with things people everywhere grapple with.” (I’m paraphrasing.) Ben wanted to know why nobody ever writes a book review that says “even though so-and-so’s novel is set in New York, its themes resonate…etc. etc.” Ben sure knows how to stick it to The Man! I love the fact that he has remained faithful to his values, of writing about Latinos, of writing about El Paso, from El Paso. That fame and fortune aren’t why he writes.
I’m still young enough that fame and fortune seem elusively tantalizing. But when I really reflect on it, it’s nice not to be completely in the limelight. I remember remarking to Sara Zarr once that I wished my books sold as well as hers, and got as many reviews as hers, and she just said, “Careful what you wish for.” Touche!
Although I am a huge fan of the ability to easily publish things on the internet–maybe I’m more into free culture than I realized–I’ve also wondered how many problems crop up. I’ve looked occasionally at ratemyprofessor.com, and though I’ve never been rated (either my students don’t love me enough or don’t hate me enough to rate me, though actually I think it has more to do with the lack of technological know-how among El Paso community college students), I’ve frequently wondered what I would do or how I would feel if one of my students wrote a bad comment about me. The New York Times today has an interesting article about what happened when some teachers at a very elite private school in New York City privately logged on to Facebook and found some hate groups directed at themselves. Scandals like these lead to questions about what “free speech” really is and really means, what privacy is and what it means, and whether posting something on a supposedly “private” site like Facebook (which is still accessed by millions of people) is actually “private” or whether it’s “publication” and thus subject to defamation claims.
I posted this on Catalyst Book Press’s blog but thought it appropriate for this one as well. Â
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the problems with professionalization or the problems that institutionalization brings to professions. Although I’ve been thinking about this problem for several years, it has really come to the forefront of my mind because I’m teaching a class on Health & Healing in Sub-Saharan Africa at Stanford this spring. The first week of school, I had my students read an essay by Steve Feierman and an excerpt from a book by John M. Janzen. Both scholars touch on the medical “pluralism†that exists in African today: though colonial states and missionaries brought biomedical health systems to the continent, they never replaced indigenous healing systems. Today, Africans (educated and uneducated, Christian or Muslim or other) access both systems for different illnesses, recognizing the legitimacy of both systems. Some of my students really struggled with this, inherently believing that biomedicine is superior because it’s based on empirical evidence. Both Feierman and Janzen attempt to disprove this assumption, arguing that indigenous healing systems are also based on empirical evidence and long periods of testing different treatments. They also point out that just as indigenous health systems offer cures that are based outside of this western scientific paradigm, western science is also based on unexamined assumptions that sometimes limit its effectiveness or its ability to recognize the validity of certain cures because they are untestable or outside the system. Healing, Feierman pointed out, is mysterious. Continue reading ‘The Problem With Professionalization’
California-based young adult writer Jay Asher has written a thought-provoking novel, Thirteen Reasons Why, which explores the tiny things that add up and cause someone to commit suicide. The story opens when the main character, Clay Jensen, receives 7 tapes in the mail, with 13 sides recorded, each side naming one person whose actions caused a young woman to kill herself. Although Hannah Baker doesn’t blame Clay, he begins to realize for himself that he had failed to reach out to Hannah when he had a chance because his own fear of being rejected was so huge. Although I wanted to see Clay in a more active role throughout the novel (rather than simply listening to Hannah’s narrative via the tapes), the novel left me plenty to ponder. How does our behavior–even things we say or do that we consider to be jokes–influence people beyond our wildest imaginations? In what way does social behavior that many consider normal, even complimentary, actually violate people’s moral integrity and sense of control over their own body? What responsibilities do we have as teachers, parents, students, and friends to notice when something is awry in somebody else’s life? Where do we draw the line between prying into something that’s not our business and intervening, even if we end up with egg on our face? And how the hell do people who know the signs of suicide fail to notice them when they’re as obvious as sunlight? Good luck, Jay, with your future writing career and congratulations on publishing a thoughtful first novel that sets a great standard for books to come!
Damian Frye gives the parents of his 9th-grade students homework. They have to read some of the literature his students read and comment on a blog. The students’ grade is partially dependent on whether their parents participate or not….
I’m not sure if this is brilliant and innovative (kudos to him for getting parents involved in their kids’ education) or just plain unjust. Remember how horrible and unfair it felt for the entire class to be punished because one person misbehaved? And remember how the only way that person who got everybody in trouble would get beat up on the playground afterwards was if they were already the class scapegoat? And how it wouldn’t work to regulate behavior anyway? And if the person who got everybody punished was the class clown and cool, somehow the teacher wouldn’t use that system of punishment anyway and if by some odd chance the teacher did, that person would never get beat up on the playground afterwards even though the expectation was that somehow the kids would regulate behavior of the other students if they were all punished? Continue reading ‘Giving Parents Homework’
This takes you to my public profile.
