Book bans and challenges are nothing new; however, over the past few years, with the rise of anti-LGBTQ legislation and “anti-woke” rhetoric that has led to various bills against the teaching of “divisive concepts,” these bans and challenges have increased dramatically. Of course, as PEN American points out, “Black and LGBTQ+ authors and books about race, racism, and LGBTQ identities have been disproportionately affected in the book bans documented by PEN America in the last year and a half.” When Georgia joined various other states by passing a “divisive concepts” bill, I wrote to my legislator pointing out that such a bill would go against the Georgia standards because teacher’s couldn’t even teach Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have A Dream” speech from the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.

Course Overview

In a 1971 review of Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, the reviewer writes about the importance of Morrison’s debut novel, pointing out that while “The Bluest Eye may not be the fiction find of the year, nor the best first novel ever published; it is, however, a sympathetic and moving portrayal of human beings caught in the age-old webs of prejudice and hate, and for this alone it deserves to be read.” The reviewer compares Morrison’s novel to Richard Wright’s 1945 autobiography Black Boy, claiming that it is “a significant addition to the rising tide of black literature” during the latter part of the 1960s and early part of the 1970s.

Literature, like all art forms, does more than just entertain us. It causes us to think about the world around us and to tackle sometimes difficult issues. As well, it helps us to discover ourselves. Morrison, writing about composing her 1987 novel Beloved, noted that she wrote it to fill in the history that others denied her. She writes, “I was keenly aware of erasures and absences and silences in the written history available to me — silences that I took for censure. History, it seemed, was about them. And if I or someone representative of myself ever were mentioned in fiction, it was usually something I wished I had skipped. …To me the enforced or chosen silence, the way history was written, controlled and shaped the national discourse.” Morrison, like other authors we will read this semester such as Ernest Gaines, Alice Walker, and James Spooner, writes to fill in the gaps, to provide space to confront issues of oppression, identity, and more.

In this course, the texts we read will cover a wide range of topics from race and education to identity and beauty standards to interracial intimacy and sexuality. These are not easy topics to encounter, and the texts that will read have moments of violence (sexual, physical, and psychological) and they contain frank depictions of racism, homophobia, and more. However, these texts are important because they each, as Morrison says about literature in her essay “Literature and Public Life,” “make it possible to experience the public without coercion and without submission.” They allow us to confront and address the issues around us without the fear of being censured.

“Literature refuses and disrupts,” Morrison continues, “passive or controlled consumption of the spectacle designed to nationalize identity in order to sell us products. Literature allows us — no, demands of us — to experience ourselves as multidimensional persons. And in so doing is far more necessary than it has ever been.” The texts we will read this semester provide us insights not just into the world around us but into ourselves as well, and they allows us to think about how we view both ourselves and others.

Primary Texts:

• Gaines, Ernest. Of Love and Dust.
• Machado, Carmen Maria. In the Dream House: A Memoir.
• Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye.
• Pérez, Ashley Hope. Out of Darkness.
• Spooner, James. The High Desert: black. punk. nowhere.
• Stone, Nic. Dear Martin.
• Walker, Alice. The Color Purple.

Secondary Texts: (I will supply these)

• Gaines, Ernest. “Bloodline in Ink.”
• Gaines, Ernest. “Aunty and the Black Experience in Louisiana.”
• King, Martin Luther. “Hammer on Civil Rights.”
• King, Martin Luther. “I Have a Dream.”
• Morrison, Toni. “Literature and Public Life”
• Pérez, Ashley Hope. “Young People Have a Right to Stories that Help Them Learn.”
• Rapport, Evan. “Intro: The Meanings of a Musical Style,” Damaged: Musicality and Race in Early American Punk.
• Walker, Alice. “Saving the Life That is Your Own: The Importance of Models in the Artist’s Life.”
• Walker, Alice. “The Black Writer and the Southern Experience.”

Course Requirements and Explanation of Grading

• Quizzes/In Class Writing 10%
• Discussion Boards 15%
• Response Papers 20%
• Research Essay 20%
• Unessay Paper 15%
• Unessay 20%

Late Essay Policy:

You have one week after the due date to turn your essay into me. However, you will not receive any comments or marks on the paper. Instead, you will just receive a grade after I read it. Reflections papers and the essay will not be accepted more than a week after the due date.

Quizzes/In Class Writing — Over the course of the semester, you will have in class quizzes based on the readings. As well, we will have short in-class writing assignments. These will be responses to prompts based on the readings.

Discussion Boards — You will be in groups for the discussion boards. Every two weeks, you will be required to post a question or observation about the readings for that week. You must also respond to two people’s posts on the forum to receive full credit for the assignment. For some weeks, I will have guided prompts.

Response Papers — During the course of the semester, you will write two short response papers. These will be 500–750 words each. You will be required to respond to one or more of the readings in the course and to use the text(s) to support your argument.

Research Essay — The essay will be between 1000–1,500 words, and it will highlight your engagement with the course material through your use of argument, sources, and critical thinking. For the essay, you must have a succinct argument and support the argument with examples from both primary and secondary texts.

Unessay — The Unessay is meant to get you to think about literature in more than just a textual manner. It is meant to help free you from the constraints of the traditional essay and to allow you to be creative with your research. The Unessay will consist of two parts: a finished product and a short paper describing how your research influenced your finished product. You will present your finished product to the rest of the class at the end of the semester.

Classroom Conduct

Students should conduct themselves in a manner respectful of themselves, their classmates, and me. While we may discuss controversial or potentially offensive issues, and class discussions may well involve differences of opinion, students are to conduct themselves in a professional manner.

Discussion will be a key part of our class. As an open classroom, we will listen to the ideas of all students with thoughtfulness. You are encouraged to challenge ideas, but not each other. In this classroom, we are equal. We will adhere to a zero-tolerance policy on discrimination of any kind.