There were times, Strix, where I felt an English teacher reading over my shoulder, and wanting me to compare and contrast uses of imagery, etc.

Sometimes I get mad at her because I don't think she needs to be that confusing, and she bounces around viewpoints from chapter to chapter here like nobody's business. I really like the story. I even like *most* of the ways she chose tot ell it. But a couple of them are to twee for me, and get in the way of the emotion and the social commentary.

ita ! oh, I get you...the imagery can be a little heavy-handed, but it was her first novel, so I cut her some slack. And my freshmen needed some obvious imagery, so...

Did I ever mention that at my last high school, 95% Black students, that I was NOT ALLOWED to teach Beloved to my SENIORS because it was too "sexual?" By a Black woman superintendent who had NEVER READ IT? Who thought Native Son was just PEACHY to teach to freshman (masturbation, rape, murder?)

Yeah, still fuming... No wonder I quit. I was...flabbergasted.

I love teaching Bluest Eye. I've taught four Morrison novels, but none teach as well as that one, IMO.

Beloved would have been a challenge to teach, I admit.I found it challenging in sections first go-round, and I read it as a junior in college. And I was coming off of thousands of books and was a rather sophisticated reader! But despite the complexity of sections, it was also very accessible in many parts.

Damn, where's my copy? (I can't read Beloved when it's summer; dunno why, it's just a thing.)

Guess what Emmett is currently reading (literally right now in his room) for English class?

The Bluest Eye.

I hope he's got a good teacher. It's a wonderful book with the right context and guidance but can fall totally flat without it.

I hope he's got a good teacher.

We'll see. Just about every book he's been assigned in high school has been an exercise in miserablism all hammering home the theme that Racism Is Bad. So...

Oh, I taught LOTS of those!! Make him read Feed as a palate-cleanser. He's old enough. It's age-appropriate and has lots of thinky stuff. AND ZOMBIES!

But the thing is, The Bluest Eye isn't about Racism is Bad, and if it's taught that way (as it often is), that's a damn shame. It's about identity, particularly in terms of how people in marginalized communities internalize majority culture views (in this novel, primarily about beauty and color) so deeply that the community begins to cannibalize its own. It's about scapegoating and hierarchy and the responsibilities any community has to its weakest members. It's about gender and class and power. Also, if students reach the end of that book and don't understand that all of these characters are African American and/or mixed race, they've missed the entire book.

I'm pretty passionate about it. I hate when it's taught badly.

It's about identity, particularly in terms of how people in marginalized communities internalize majority culture views

You do realize this parses as: Racism Is Bad?

Because it does.

Plus, horrible shit happens to the main characters like incestuous rape. So...though it is a different book, a better and more complex book than some of the others he's read it conforms exactly with: Miserable Shit Happens Because Racism Is Bad.

Seriously, those are the only books he's assigned at his school. Except Romeo and Juliet. Which has a miserable ending but it's not because Racism Is Bad.

Also, Catcher in the Rye which he did not find uplifting.

School has actively ruined all the pleasure Emmett might take in reading. He does read it seriously and he feels it. And it makes him feel like shit. It's not the teachers - it's the curriculum.

I've mentioned this before simply as a matter of advocacy.

Dear Teachers: When putting together your booklist for the upcoming year please consider teaching something besides Miserable Shit Happens Because Racism Is Bad. These are not the only books that have teachable virtues. Here's a shocking notion: comic novels have literary value as well.