Masaryk university Faculty of Education Department of English Language and Literature
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- 4. 2 Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) 4.2.1 Life and activities
- 4.2.2 Reading and listening
- 4.3 Amiri Baraka / LeRoi Jones (b. 1934) 4.3.1 Biography
- 4. 4 June Jordan (1936-2002) 4.4.1 Biography
- 4.5 Toni Morisson (b. 1938) 4.5.1 Biography
- 4. 6 Yusef Komunyakaa (b. 1947) 4.6.1 Biography
4.1.4 Suggestions Poem Warm up Think about things, deeds and actions that most people do and that you do, too. When you have a couple of items, pick them up and convert them into a short poem. Start or end (each) line with words “ I, too”. (Time limit can be 5-10 minutes.)
Essay Prereading
Essay Follow up
4. 2 Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) 4.2.1 Life and activities A Baptist minister, political activist and Civil Rights movement leader, Dr. Martin Luther King cannot be probably considered a literary writer like the other writers in the present selection. Neverheless, King is author of many speeches and letters that marked history. King served as a reverend and devoted his life to fight for the civil rights of black people. King alongside organized peaceful protest demonstrations, delivered speeches, negotiated with clerks and presidents. In 1964 he was the youngest Nobel Prize awardee for his contribution to nonviolent resistance and equal treatment for all races.1 Martin Luther King was assassinated in 1968. 4.2.2 Reading and listening Objectives
I decided to include this work for four main reasons. Firstly, Martin Luther King is a personality that students are or will be familiar with from History lessons and therefore it should be better acceptable than something altogether new. Secondly, I believe that learners of English (at appropriate level) should know the speech. Thirdly, it is delivered in spoken, not written form and students can enjoy the original author’s delivery. Fourthly, both the text and the audiovisual record of the speech are legally downloadable from the internet, and therefore easily accessible to students. The text of the speech with links to web pages are included in the Appendix. 4.2.3 Suggestions If the school disposes of a computer study room and headphone sets, students can be taken there and simultaneously watch and listen to the recording, having texts in front of them. If there is no such equipement, teacher can play the audio recording in class; or encourage students to watch video at home or in a library. In any case, students start by reading the short introduction to the topic.1 Key words should be explained beforehand. For the pace of speech is moderate, reading before listening is not necessary, though possible. During listening, students can follow the text or just watch, the choice is up to them. Because of the lenght of the recording, I suggest fixing the number of listenings from standard three to two. After the listening, I recommend leaving space for student’s questions. A bridge to past can be done by remembering Hughes’s poem “Negro” and the discussion about dreams. (Which dreams did black people have and were they achieved? What is the reaction of black people? Etc.)
Baraka was born LeRoi Jones in a middle-class family in Newark, New Jersey. Baraka was gifted and graduated at the age of 15. On the other hand, Baraka must have been very extravagant as a teenager. His reflections on the early part of his life follow – “When I was in high school I used to drink a lot of wine, throw bottles around, walk down the street in women’s clothes just because I couldn’t find anything to satisfy myself.”2 At the age of 18, Baraka enrolled at Howard University in Washington, D. C. The atmosphere of the university world was so tight that Baraka did not stay there more than two years and left. However, he had managed to attend classes of several famous black scholars whose influence was certainly reflected in Baraka’s works. One of them was Sterling A. Brown who introduced young Baraka to themes and techniques of African American music. Having left Howard, Baraka joined the air force and served three years in Puerto Rico. After being discharged, Baraka moved to Greenwich Village in New York and became a part of the Beat scene which was already formed by Gregory Corso, Allan Ginsberg, and other artist around them. Baraka gained reputation as a music critic, contributed to several magazines and in the late 1950s started to create his own poetry which raises attention even today. During the early 1960s, Baraka is famous and popular for his attacking and, to a certain extent, cruel poetry which reflects the heated atmosphere of that time. As time went, Baraka’s opinions shaped, he became the member of the Nation of Islam and changed his name from LeRoi Jones to Amiri Imamu Baraka. In the mid sixties, Baraka founded the Black Arts Repertory/School which became the basis for the Black Aesthetic movement. Baraka has been one of the most creative and prolific writers during the last forty years. New collections of his poetry are published almost every two years. Baraka’s poetry expresses the author’s harsh opinions on the contemporary President Bush and Secretary of State Rice’s international policy.
Baraka is the author of over 40 books of essays, poems, drama, and music history and criticism, a poet icon and revolutionary political activist who has recited poetry and lectured on cultural and political issues extensively in the USA, the Caribbean, Africa, and Europe.1 Baraka is also famous for his poetry performance, when he lets himself the freedom to occasionally change or expand the poem as he improvises with the jazz music. His first volume was Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note, published in 1961 and was appreciated for its technical innovations. Baraka shares his experience from Cuba in Cuba Libre (1961) and retrospectively in The Autobiography of LeRoi Jones (1984). In the 1960s, Baraka publishes his second book of poetry, The Dead Lecturer, writes essays and several plays, including The Slave, The Toilet, and the most famous and the most popular one, The Dutchman. Baraka also co-edited Black fire: An Anthology of Afro-American Writing (1968) with Larry Neal. Some of the lately published Baraka’s titles: Transbluesency (1996), a book of selected poems from years 1961-1995, The Essence of Reparations (2003), a new collections of essays on American history, and Somebody Blew Up America And Other Poems (2004).
Objectives
4.4.4 Suggestions Warm up “Wise I” Tell students that the class is going to have a noisy beginning of the lesson. Announce to students that they are not allowed to say a word, but they can shout, scream, mumble, fizzle, snuffle, etc. for 3 seconds as soon as you say “start” and that they have to stop immediately as you say “stop”. As the teacher you may wish to clasp hands instead, ring a bell or find different signal. Practise it more times, the length of pauses is variable. Then, ask students to produce always the same sound (each student has his or her own), and to add a movement of their body as they produce the sound. Again, pracise it more times, encourage students to move from their chair, but at the moment you signall “stop”, nobody can move. Improvise with the pauses to make the whole production rhytmical, students should enjoy it. Calm them down by taking a deep breath and sighing out (done by the whole class all at once). Consequently, ask them to sit down and write down the sound they were producing, encourage them. What does the sound remind them of? They can put it down as well. Finally, ask students to write a few lines, that would feature the written sound in case you do not like saying explicitely “write a poem”. Volunteers read aloud their lines to the class. By this activity, students are more likely to evaluate Baraka’s use of “oom boom ba boom” in “Wise I”. Prereading “Monday in B-flat” Students work in groups. Hand out or write on a blackboard the title and do not say it is a title of a poem. Given the title of a text, students are asked to write down all words that could appear in it. If they are puzzled, whole class can brainstorm what “B” could mean, which can get them on a path. Students should announce, after a minute or two, how many words they have and whether they need more time to finish. Draw a chart on the blackboard. Write down how many words each group have. Group may present their list of words. Then hand out and/or read the poem. Did any of their words appear in the poem? How many? Put the results on the blackboard, you may count percentage of succesful tips. Follow up “Wise I”
“Monday in B-flat”
Listening (optional) Teacher may wish to play “911”, a song recorded by Wyclef Jean and Mary J. Blidge, African American r&b singers in 2002. The CD that featured “911” is called Ecleftic – 2 Sides A Book. The song is slow and words comprehensible and therefore I suggest letting students listen and relax. Lyrics are attached in the Appendix.
Jordan was born in Harlem in a working-class family. Her father was a postal clerk, her mother worked as a nurse. Both of her parents escaped from their home in Jamaica to get out of the poverty into the desired United States. Jordan began writing early as a child – at the age of seven. As years passed, she moved through many influential tendencies, currents and trends and she gained a truly literary appreciation.1 Jordan’s mother’s unfullfilled desire to become an artist and her later possible suicide could have quite strong influence on Jordan’s later writing. After passing many life experiences, she was a columnist for The Progressive and tried to pass her knowledge and enthousiasm as a teacher onto students at the University of California at Berkeley where she taught African American and womans’s studies. She died of cancer in 2002. 4.4.2 Work June Jordan was one of the most procreative and prolific writers of the late 20th century. She published books for children, about seven collections of poetry, three plays and four books of political essays. She gained awards for her work and mainly her activism. All her works thrive with passionate enthousiasm and zeal for any subject she broached, which is most visible in her essays and her poetry work. This Jordan’s ardour can origin, among others, in the fact that she travelled in Africa and visited coutries of the Central America; she had the chance to get to know places and people that later appeared in her writings that can be found very emotive and fierce. 4.4.3 Reading
Objectives
Sexuality is seldom discussed in schools so students should be interested in text immediately as they read the title. On the other hand, this work is very long and difficult for secondary school students. However, it is worth the effort to read it. I cut out a few paragraphs to make it simpler and more understandable. The text below is the shortened version, how to work with it most effectively is explained in the next section 4. 4. 4.
3. 4. 4 Suggestions Warm up
Students are told that the title of the next text they are going to read and work with is “A New Politics of Sexuality”. In groups of 3-4 they try to figure out the form (poem, speech, ...) and the content of the text, characters (if any), words that may occur in the text, etc. They may also like trying writing a short introduction to the announced title. Creativity is welcomed. Time limit may vary according to students’ zeal from 5 minutes for the indifferent to 20 minutes for the enthousiastic so they have time to finish their ideas and put them down. Groups can share their work with class. Reading For the text is long and demanding, it may be cut into short paraghraphs with translated vocabulary attached. Each student then picks up one paper from a pile, reads it, and tries to find out where his part fits by reading other students’ papers. The whole text should be then analogically reconstructed. Cards with the cut text and translated vocabulary are attached in Appendix. Code for quick correction is “JORDAN SEXUaLITY”. Follow up Reading of the whole essay was probably difficult. Students should be given some time to range ideas in their head. Teacher can then ask: What are your reactions? Did you like it? Why? Did you dislike it? Why? Students should point at lines that influenced their opinion. Further discussion can then follow. Questions on the “form” of an essay
The questions should help the students to get deeper in the essay and to realize what aspects make it persuasive for one and indifferent for other. The fact that they will discover that the writer makes a character of himself and that she refers to items she hopes the audience will accept could help them creating their own essay. Besides, they should be able to formulate aspects of the form of essay. The “definition” of essay can be done by brainstorming in small groups of 3-4, then one smaller groups should agree with another and finally the class should agree of some typical characteristics. Teacher can help hesitating students by asking: Does the essay have a strict form? Is is based on a research? What kind of arguments is used? Etc. Possible student’s findings: relatively open form, persuasive, based on author’s interest and opinion, author does not bother with opinions that stand opposite to their opinions; uses narrative (like a story), meditation (like a poem), interaction (like a play).1
4.5 Toni Morisson (b. 1938) 4.5.1 Biography One of the most important contemporary representatives of African American literature, with a full name Cloe Anthony Wofford, was born in an industrial city of Loraine, Ohio. She was the second of four children in a black working-class family. Morrison displayed an early interest in literature. She enrolled Howard and Cornell Universities for humanity studies and continued her academic career at Texas Southern University, Howard University, and Yale. During the years at Howard University she changed her first name from “Chloe” to “Toni”, explaining that “Chloe” was too difficult for people to pronounce. In 1958, Morisson got married, had two children with her husband and divorced in 1964. After the divorce Morrison moves to New York City where she works as an editor, specializes on African American literature. She played an important role in establishing the African American literature into the mainstream American literature. Morrison was awarded Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993. She was the first African American to receive Nobel Prize. In 2005, Oxford University awarded Morrison an honorary Doctor of Letters degree. 4.5.2 Work Probably because of where she was born, and because she wanted to step out of a certain stereotype, Morisson’s works take place in black villages rather than in the urban North or the rural South, traditional settings of African Americans’ work. Her first novel The Bluest Eye (1970) was immensely succesful so were her following titles: Sula (1974), Song of Solomon (1977), Tar Baby (1981), Beloved (1987), Playing in the dark (nonfiction collection published in 1991), Jazz (1992), Paradise (1998), and Love (2003). Morrison has also worked as an editor at headquaters of Random House, famous New York publisher. From 1989 to 2006 Morrison held the Robert F. Goheen Chair in the Humanities at Princeton University. She currently holds a place on the editorial board of The Nation magazine.1 4.5.3 Reading The extract is from the first third of the book (page 68 in English original and page 82 in Czech translation). Author draws look on young black women who grew up differently than the average black population. Further on in the book, reader meet Geraldina, who was brought up in the described way, and her family. Objectives
4.5.4 Suggestions
4. 6 Yusef Komunyakaa (b. 1947) 4.6.1 Biography This African American poet was born in the United States, in Bogalusa, a town near New Orleans. His suggestive poems influenced by the rhythm of jazz and blues are available in valuable Czech translation thanks to Prof. Josef Jařab. Komunyakaa was born into the time of segregation in the South and into the time of Civil Rights movement. During his life, he has published a few collections with different topics. Like some other African American poets, Komuyakaa likes readings poetry in public, when he can express the rhythm and musicality of his work. 4.6.2 Work In Magic City, a book of verse published in 1992 Komunyakaa seeks inspiration in his childhood and adolescence. Early Copacetic (1984) is, on the other hand, devoted to the author’s passion for jazz. As a young man Komunyakaa fought in the U.S. army in Vietnam in the 1960s. His experiences as a soldier in the Vietnam War, as Jarab clarifies in his afterword (2003), must have been suppressed for a considerable amount of time when it suddenly and unexpectedly sprouted from the author’s subconsciousness.1 This lapse of time hand in hand with still lively images of the dread of war create an unusual suggestive, coherent and cohesive piece of poetry in the collection Dien Cai Dau (1988), to which belong the folowing poems. 4.6.3 Reading Objectives
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