Centering the Margin

I've spent a fair amount of my teaching career debating which books "deserve" a spot on our secondary English curriculum. Some books would be placed on the optional summer reading list, and others would be added to the official curriculum for in-depth study. Often, the books that wound up in the latter category were those that were purported to have literary depth, to be needed for college, or to otherwise be ignored by students. Often, these books had held their place in British and American English classrooms for decades. Jewett (2017) asserts that for over 50 years, English classes have been taught as courses in Euro-American studies (p. 95). The world our students are a part of is larger than the predominantly white populations of Europe and the USA; so too must our curriculum reach beyond this narrow worldview. Jewett suggests replacing "canonical works" with humanizing books "written by and about people of color" (p. 95). This push is supported by the #OwnVoices movement that recognizes works created by people within the culture they portray. 

During my six years as a secondary teacher, I ensured that my curricula had representation beyond the straight, able-bodied, white male perspective, but I do not think that I truly decolonized my classroom. Ladson-Billings (2021) calls for a culturally relevant approach that would reorganize the curriculum as a whole. For example, to center the authentic experiences of African Americans, instead of "focusing only on slavery, immigration, Manifest Destiny, and American Exceptionalism, the re-set curriculum will engage questions of sovereignty, liminality, otherness, hegemony, and reparations" (p. 73). Not just the books, but the unit themes and the ideas deemed worthy of knowing must change. One way of adopting a decolonial perspective that "challenges the universal logic and matrix of power produced by colonialism" (Garcia et. al., 2021, p. 3), then, is perhaps by authentically depicting historically marginalized communities in all themes of study.

I have included resources that have shaped my thinking on how to choose books to include in curriculum as well as reading lists to help diversify my shelves on the Creating Local Canons page.