Afrolatino Poetry Lesson Pack #1

Afrolatino Poetry + Form and Structure 

(#1 with unit option)

Katherine Ocampo-Mosquera, Afrolatinizamos Cohort 2023

Objective: Students will be able to identify different types of poems.

Class/Subject/Content: High School (9th Grade) Beginning of the Year Unit (English Language Arts)

English Language Arts Standards: (Based on New York State)

Standard 5: 

Analyze the structure of texts, including how specific sentences, paragraphs, and larger portions of the text (e.g., a section, chapter, scene, or stanza) relate to each other and the whole.

Multilingual Learner Standards:

NYSESLAT Target of Measurement: Listening .9–12.1: Students can identify words, phrases, or sentences that signal important aspects of individuals or events, claims or counterclaims, evidence, multiple points of view, rhetorical devices, and/or the message or theme in grade-level spoken discourse.

NYSESLAT Target of Measurement: Reading .9–12.1: Students can identify words, phrases, or sentences that signal important aspects of individuals or events, claims or counterclaims, evidence, multiple points of view, rhetorical devices, and/or the message or theme in grade-level spoken discourse.

Topic/Unit: Identity #1: How does race impact Identity?

Do Now: What do you know about poems? What does a poem look like? Do you have a favorite poem? Why do you like it? 

I Do:

Mini Lesson #1: Looking at examples of narrative, lyrical, free verse, limerick, sonnet, and villanelle. Slideshow

Videos for Support:

• Identifying Structural Elements of Poetry

• What makes a poem…a poem?

• Poetry Structure

Model Examples: 

Introducing Darrel Alejandro Holnes novel: “StepMotherLand”

• Lyrical example: “When My Mother Gives Up Her American Dream to Marry My Father” by Darrel Alejandro Holnes

• Narrative example: “Black Parade” by Darrel Alejandro Holnes

We do:

Introduce “Bread pudding Grandmamma” by Darrel Alejandro Holnes. The poem will be broken up to three parts to identify the parts of the poem that makes it a __________ poem.

Collaboration:

Partner Work: Students with a partner will be introduced to another part of the same poem “Bread pudding Grandmamma” by Darrel Alejandro Holnes, and will identify, and annotate the parts of the poem that makes it a __________ poem.

You do:

Individual Work: will be introduced to another part of the same poem “Bread pudding Grandmamma” by Darrel Alejandro Holnes, and will identify, and annotate the parts of the poem that makes it a __________ poem.

Differentiation:

Visual: Mini Lesson Videos.

Verbal/Auditory: Audio version of the Poems.

Organizational: Mini Lesson about Structure. Labeling the structures in the poems.

Metacognitive: Collaboration, and Individual work: Thinking about the structures such as lines, stanzas, rhyme, and repetition and how it creates a poem.

Kinesthetic: N/A

Exit Ticket: Students will be given an option to write a stanza of a poem that can reflect narrative, lyrical, free verse, limerick, sonnet, and villanelle of any topic of choice.

Ideal Questions:

• What are the features of a poem?

• What is a line?

• What is a stanza?

• What is a rhyme? What does a rhyme look like?

• What is repetition? How does it affect a poem?

Anticipated misunderstandings/misconceptions:

• Confusing the different types of poetry, and their purpose. This can be explicitly taught during the mini lesson.

Novel: 

StepMotherLand by: Darrel Alejandro Holnes

YouTube videos:

• Identifying Structural Elements of Poetry

• What makes a poem…a poem?

• Poetry Structure

Google Slideshow

Form and Structure of Poetry 

“When My Mother Gives Up Her American Dream to Marry My Father” 

by Darrel Alejandro Holnes

She always knew

it was coming, the harpy on

horseback, deity of her dreams with a

grey and white feathered halo for a crown.

I never understood religious offering,

giving back to creators something

they could so easily take themselves, whether it be

taking her lamming for slaughter or taking her

dreams deferred of becoming a

nurse like Diahann Carroll’s Julia on

US TV stations that my mother watched

as a little Black girl in the Panamá of the 1960s.

Julia’s good looks are an act of

defiance. Black women on

TV were never that beautiful.

My mother takes note and

offers my father her

velvet on their wedding night.

He crushes it to bring the

beauty out of the thing

like all men taught

by their fathers to

press a grape for wine or a

body for blood when it was the only

red the village men said he should take for a

wife, when it was the only kind of

woman the village men said he should take for

love. There’s always a bit of

violence to sacrifice; flesh

crushed under the pressure of

other people’s expectations, giving

life to the machos, the patrones, the pelaos, like me.

The blow of birthing machismo is only softened by

promises of sainthood, promises of

power over man now that her only

son was going to be one.

“Black Parade” by Darrel Alejandro Holnes 

https://poets.org/poem/black-parade

Coming out isn’t the same as coming to America

except for the welcome parade

put on by ghosts like your granduncle Roy

who came to New York from Panamá in the 50s

and was never heard of again

and by the beautiful gays who died of AIDS in the 80s

whose cases your mother studied

in nursing school. She sent you to the US to become

an “American” and you worry

she’ll blame this country

for making you a “marica,”

a “Mary,” like it might have made your uncle Roy.

The words “America” and “marica” are so similar!

Exchange a few vowels

and turn anyone born in this country

queer. I used to watch Queer as Folk as a kid

and dream of sashaying away

the names bullies called me in high school

for being Black but not black enough, or the kind of black they saw on TV:

black-ish, negro claro, cueco. (this part was crossed out)

It was a predominately white school,

the kind of white the Spanish brought to this continent

when they cozened my ancestors from Africa.

There was no welcome parade for my ancestors back then

so, they made their own procession, called it “carnaval”

and fully loaded the streets with egungun costumes,

holy batá drum rhythms, shouting and screaming in tongues,

and booty dancing in the spirit.

I don’t want to disappear in New York City,

lost in a drag of straightness.

So instead, I proceed

to introduce my mother to my first boyfriend

after I’ve moved her to Texas

and helped make her a citizen.

Living is trafficking through ghosts in a constant march

toward a better life, welcoming the next in line.

Thriving is winning the perreo to soca on the

Noah’s Arc pride parade float, like you’re

the femme bottom in an early aughts gay TV show.

Surviving is (cross-)dressing as an American marica,

until you’re a ‘merica or a ‘murica

and your ancestors see

you’re the king-queen of Mardi Gras,

purple scepter, crown, and krewe.

“Bread Pudding Grandmamma” by Darrel Alejandro Holnes 

https://www.nyu.edu/about/news-publications/publications/arts-digest/issue-3/poetry-pause.html

We crack open the coconut and

        mix the fluids of el coco with cow’s milk

like I mixed words with grunts and moos when

        speaking with my childhood fable friends.

My grandmother teaches me her recipe for bread pudding when

        I come home heartbroken from high school.

Together, we bake everyday pains into guilty pleasures.

        We mix torn apart bread-loaf backs into the batter—

always mixed in a ceramic bowl—

        and watch them move like tectonic plates.

I turn the earth at force with my spoon like

        turning through stages of teenage rebellion where

nothing stands firm beneath my feet and

        my mind, like bread, is an uneven sponge.

I add in brown sugar, to taste, she says,

        and eat some as we bake to feel

better about being called a brownie today in class—

        a little glucose for her day of tasting tears that

run down her cheeks as old age

        runs with my grandfather’s mind.

We add white sugar, then vanilla, no almond extract,

        unless her monthly check has come in time.

If it hasn’t, our palette will taste a richer sweetness—

        the soulful truth of Caribbean cuisine:

almond absence brings the vanilla out more.

        Our hands mush together our pains with

a few grains of salt, for style, she says, with

        a few slices of butter, the secret to life

in each mixing bowl.

I’m the darling grandchild,

        her favorite, I believe.

At school there is trouble

        and medication for her is expensive,

so we make bread, bake bread,

        the sweet kind to satisfy our appetite.

She digs from the bottom of a jar for

        fruits soaked in wine—

Only the best ones.

        We add this last.

This is what gives it that taste man,

        any liquor is all right.

She talks, I smile.

        Eighty-six-years-old,

I believe her old hands and weak eyes

        but strong legs and big smile.

We empty it into the pan,

        bake it, and trade our worries for the aroma.

We breathe in the perfume of

        hard work on a hot afternoon,

forget that children can be mean,

        and that with wisdom comes age,

but with age comes ailment.

        Bake for one and a half hours,

and devour.