Adolescent Fiction: Melba's Story

Monday, April 16, 2012

Melba's Story

In reading the book, Warriors Don’t Cry, the reader is shocked at the treatment of not only Melba Patillo and her fellow warriors, but the rest the African American community and their supporters. The reader has to constantly remind themself that this actually happened, this was a real event and people really treated other human beings this way. The comparison book, while impactful and carrying an important message was nonfiction. Both books are emotional for the reader, causing them to evaluate the treatment of others, I do feel that since Melba’s story is nonfiction, it carries more weight no their reader and strikes a deeper sense of emotion.

While reading Melba’s story, the reader is aware that this teenager did exist, she did battle segregation and she did have to go about it almost alone. Some of use battled tears right along with her while she was bullied and hit, screamed at, and treated so badly we may have questioned how humans could act in such a way.

We have all learned about segregation and Brown vs. the Board of Education in high school, but this book puts a face on one of those participants. We now have a first hand account of what Melba went through, what she thought, what she feared, what she hoped and what she dreamed. Junior’s story was impactful, but it was a work of fiction, thoughts and ideas where made up by the author’s mind. Melba’s thoughts were her own. She was a teenager who just wanted to go to high school with her friends, have a boyfriend, and be loved by her family.

Melba’s story is impactful, self-examining, and painful, but most of all it’s true. Her words are just that, her own words. Junior’s words do carry a punch, but they are not as heart wrenching as Melba’s because they did not really occur. Melba’s story is coupled with segregation and rising racial tension along with her desire to be a normal teenager, something everything can relate with. Her story leaves an impact on it’s reader so much that they question how humans could ever treat one another in such a disgusting way, especially an innocent girl just trying to be a teenager.

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Post #9 Shakespeare Bats Cleanup (due MONDAY, 4/30 by class time)

Shakespeare Bats Cleanup explores a number of themes, among them grief, identity, coming of age (Bildungsroman), friendship, love, and others. Kevin, our adolescent narrator, shares his story with us as a poetic narrative which includes poems written in conventional forms and free-form poems. Choose one theme which the book develops, and show its development through the text. As you do so, be sure to consider and articulate how the book's structure (as poems) affects whatever theme you discuss.

Post #7 Warriors Don't Cry (due Sunday 4/15 by 8 pm)

Choices for responses:

1. The title of this text refers to warriors. How are the characters warriors? Are you comfortable with that depiction? Why or why not? Be sure to offer specific description as you explore characterization.

2. While it could certainly be argued that the author of our last novel does place himself in the text, that book is fiction. This text is not; rather, it's a memoir. How does knowing that the book is non-fiction shape your reading of it? Does it cause you to respond differently? If so, how? If not, why not? Consider characters, events, and the historical context carefully as you respond.

Post #6 The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (due Sunday, 3/25 by 8 pm)

Post #5 Annie on My Mind (part 2) due Sun 3/11 by 8 pm

You have several different options for your response:

1. How is social transgression framed and treated in the novel? Do you as a reader find that the characters are affirmed or punished for stepping outside of social conventions?

2. We've talked a bit about parallel spaces in texts, spaces in which characters encounter very different experiences. After reading this novel, can we argue that those parallel spaces never intersect? What function might those separate (or not so separate) spaces serve?

3. The story is written in the epistolary (letter writing) tradition. How does that framing affect your reading? Your interaction with characters? Your response?

Post #3 Due by Monday's class (2/20)

For this post, you have three options:

1. Respond to some theme you identify in the novel. Be sure that you make a claim and support it using specific examples from the book.

2. Apply the article's claims to the novel. Be sure that you make a claim and support it using specific examples from the article and the book.

3. Examine the novel as science fiction. How is it both utopic and dystopic in its function? What might it be warning us as a society against? Be sure that you make a claim and support it using specific examples from the text.

Post #1 Due by Thursday's class (1/26)

Ellen Raskin's novel The Westing Game is a detective novel, yes, but we can tease out many themes as we examine the text. A few we introduced and explored briefly in class today:

the Cinderella effect

the roles of women

identity construction

gaming and strategy

trust (as it relates to other themes or on its own)

oppressive/repressive (think Trites) parents

Choose from a theme on this list or choose a theme you've noted in the text, and write about the way the theme is introduced and developed through the novel. As you show how the theme works throughout the book, be sure to offer specific examples to support your ideas.