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.

Junior year of hs English was American Literature:

Huckleberry Finn, The Great Gatsby, Moby Dick (OMG), McTeague, The Scarlet Letter, Invisible Man (which we never got to). I think I might be missing a couple. We read them in chronological order.

I went to a predominantly White HS and may I just say: Huck Finn is not a great book to teach in a predom White HS when there is like one Black child in the room.

Huck Finn is not a great book to teach in a predom White HS when there is like one Black child in the room.

I'll bet.

It's gotta be a tough book to teach anyway. But I do think it's one of the best books about race in America. I mean, Huck earns his moment. You don't think he's bullshitting when he says he'd rather save Jim even if it meant he had to go to Hell.

In sum:

Huckleberry Finn - Racism (and Slavery) is Bad
The Great Gatsby - Capitalism is Bullshit
Moby Dick - Whales are Bad (actually the World is Wicked but "I stab at thee from the heart of hell!")
McTeague - Dentists are Bad
The Scarlet Letter - Sexism is Bad (and hypocrisy)
Invisible Man - It's about identity, particularly in terms of how people in marginalized communities internalize majority culture views. Which is bad.

Why doesn't anybody teach Philip Roth's The Great American Novel?

Now that's a funny book.

My literature phd Beau loves Huck Finn too.

The book is permanently tainted for me.

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.

We had a great convo the other night about his feelings on just that subject. The look of horror on his face when I told him I read Catcher in the Rye by choice was worth the price of admission. He seemed relieved when I told him I hated it. Of course, it still wasn't as bad as having to read Ethan Frome and Mrs. Dalloway. My prep school reading was less "rascism is bad" and more "let's bore you death with stories about depression and prepare you for your WASP life of alcoholism."

Tell him it could be worse. My senior year we had a unit of Russian Lit and a unit on Hemingway, both of which I Did Not Want.

I had to read and write a 20 page research paper on Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago. BEFORE INTERNETS.

Torture.

In my high school Junior lit class, we got The Hobbit.

God bless Mr. Berryhill.

I don't remember any teaching moments. Except Dragons Are Bad (but have great dialogue). It may have been more a matter of "For god's sake, get some books in those poor hillbillies' hands!"