finding forrest... and new ways to connect with reading and writing about the "real."
[This blog post is migrated from my original blog, "Mockingbirds Nest Here."]
You know, I promised to blog, and I haven't blogged. Too many classes to teach, too little time for writing! This is not how I wished to spend all of my time. But let's not get bogged down in that - I need to find a way to do some short spurts.... I have just finished tweeting during one of my favorite hours of the week, #pblchat.
Something magical happened afterwards when I tweeted an author who is my latest distant mentor about teaching writing, but first let me provide a little backstory.
I started teaching dual credit ENGL 1301/1302 this year - that's freshmen comp and rhetoric for those not familiar with the numbers and acronyms. College in high school, with a little project based learning mixed in - it's an interesting class. I have a lot of freedom, and although I use a writing workshop model for teaching, I want students who don't read (mostly what I have) to be exposed to as much rich and rewarding and impacting texts as I can find and have time to integrate. We have been working on using our distant teachers, using that #nwp tenet to its nth degree. Mentor texts. The whole deal. I live for finding a new text to share. But today I stumbled onto something. It's the nonfiction-fiction thing. I really stops me in my tracks as a reader, writer, and teacher. I've always been in love with this kind of writing, this style of storytelling, these books, these authors. They're not just my distant teachers - they are my friends. My colleagues. Mano-a-mano, we take on the most reluctant writers and readers and teach them how to tell a story, and tell it slant, and tell it good, and tell it true. All at the same time. Each week I want them to meet someone new. We love Frank McCourt, and Natalie Goldberg, and bell hooks, and Sarah Vowell, and Laurie Halse Anderson, and F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Rick Bragg, and Leonard Pitts, Jr., and I go could on and on and on. They have favorites. I have mine, too. So far, I have hit a homerun with all but one. And today, we turned it into a really nice save.
I used an excerpt from Matt Bondurant's, The Wettest County in the World, recently - just passed out a copy I made from my personal copy of the book, of one page of description, rife with imagery and onomatopoeia and sensory language and all manner of delicious words that aren't just for the mind but for the soul. I mean, yes, I have read the entire copyright manual - I know, I know. But I couldn't resist - I had to put a page of it into my students' hands. I needed them to see what I saw. I have read the book in snatches, because I fell in love with the story of those Bondurant boys from the recent film, Lawless, which to my chagrin was COMPLETELY SNUBBED by all things Oscar recently. (That's another blog.) I plan to wear this book as a jacket this summer - really feel the words, let them wash over me, become like old friends and comfortable shoes. I mean - Bondurant is truly a master of words. If you haven't tapped into his stories yet, do. And soon. I put him up there with Rick Bragg. And that - that is saying something. I love a Pulitzer. (Dr. B, it will come. I'm convinced.)
But they didn't bite. They didn't like it. They didn't see it.
I went back to my mental drawing board and thought about the nonfiction-fiction issue. I mean, in 1301, we work on more nonfiction than fiction - and creative nonfiction is my forte. I can teach it. I can do it. I write, they write, we share, etc. I mean, I'm too chicken to try and get published, but who is talking about that? I'm so "do as I say, not as I do." We read aloud, we discuss, we table talk, we argue, we mimic style, and we read aloud some more. The whole nine yards. But this time... this time, it didn't work. Everything else I shared, they loved. This one, which was one of the greatest gold mines of language I've found so far - it just didn't work.
And after some time, I figured it out - it was too much to ask in an excerpt without any context on those Bondurant boys, Prohibition, real gangsters in the late 1920's. I mean, if we want them to read Gatsby or Their Eyes Were Watching God, shouldn't we show them how the other half lives? The half that made the hooch people were smuggling to sell and dying to buy? So we did a little Q & A. We did a little meet and greet with Dr. Bondurant on the screen. I pulled up his bio, his website, his picture - talked about how he teaches (or did? Still there? Not sure!) right down the road at the University of Texas at Dallas. He could be their teacher in 2 years. (Man, are they ready for such greatness? I probably need to step it up....) We did a little flash research on that "Spanish lady flu" that Forrest Bondurant, a key player in the Wettest County saga, catches and miraculously survives, and on those 18th and 21st amendments..... They knew stuff. They knew 1933 and 1929 and Al Capone and tommy guns. They surprised me with their knowledge that 20 minutes earlier they seemed to be devoid of when prompted. We even listened to Tom Hardy share Forrest's words of wisdom in a brief clip onscreen. (One girl said, "Miss Adams, I have no idea what Forrest said. I just couldn't stop watching his lips." I mean, I'll take whatever hooks them, you know?)
Then.... we read the excerpt again. With new eyes. Thinking about Forrest's bout with the flu, about that garish cut across the neck that left him near dead, about Maggie in that red dress with the gold chain and a valise that carried not only her secrets but an identity she let slip in and out like the shadows over the mountains at dusk, about what actually created the real scars they both wore, and how a beautiful woman could sit night after night with a Bondurant like Forrest and only listen to the radio. Only LISTEN. ("What?" the kids say. "Just the radio? No way." No kissing? No sex? Scandalous!)
And somehow, in the 90 minutes of our class that passed today.... Forrest came to life. He walked around our room. He showed them his "mouthlike" scar. And they understand what a Bondurant meant when he said, "Nothing can kill us." What believing one is invincible really means. What living really means. How the respect and lack of fear for death makes a man brave, gutsy, and not the least bit bluish and hollow-chested from some Lady Flu that killed more healthy than sick. For my students, Forrest Bondurant stood ten feet tall in room 310 today.
So I told them - now go home and write something like that. Make someone larger than life on paper. Let us meet them. Let them walk around our room when we read about them. Don't worry about it being good or publishable or amazing - just tell a good story about a person you know who is larger than life to you. Look at their eccentricities, their little catchphrases, the glint of their eyes when they are keeping a secret, and what things are really kept packed in a suitcase that they take on the road. Do what Matt Bondurant does with his going-for-the-jugular (a la Natalie Goldberg) diction and powerful life reflection. Don't hold anything back. And if you have to show a little ugliness, it's all good. Everyone has those skeletons in their closets. They tell a tale that stands on its own two feet. Sometimes not a bit of exaggeration is needed because the nonfiction looms larger than the fiction ever wanted to.
And thank you, Dr. Bondurant. Your family and Franklin County found some new fans today. One student even wanted to check out the book from my classroom library after class. That's what it is all about. Creating more readers and writers, helping them read and write things that matter, and not just for college or work. Stories like yours, reading about others or writing our own, are what we stay alive for and want to make more of - one page at a time. I can't really teach it, but I can show it, and I couldn't today without your help.
Postscript: As I was blogging this, Dr. Bondurant himself tweeted me back. I am so incredibly honored. Maybe we should collaborate on this. I'd like to use more of the book as I revamp the class for next year in my collection of memoirs and nonfiction-fiction "teachers" I bring to my students. What do you think? I'll even take a Skype call. My kids would never get over actually having a connection with a real, living author, especially one with such a powerful voice for storytelling.
**Artwork by Jashar Awan. Posted on a blog called Welcome Friend or Foe, Awan reveals that he was inspired by a scene in Wettest County that was to fit a review in the New York Times by Louisa Thomas. Awan's artwork is truly inspiring and powerful. This drawing is no longer posted on his actual website, but you can find out more about Awan and his artwork here.
