Teaching Black Baseball Literature

General Discussion Questions:

• How does this text contribute to and/or complicate how we know what we know about baseball history?

• How do these representations of black baseball engage, challenge, and/or recalibrate American myths of the American dream and/or exceptionalism?

• How do these texts construct race, gender, class, and sexuality? In particular, how do they grapple with white heteronormative masculinity and/or women’s marginalization in baseball?

• How do the narratives that writers and filmmakers advance about black baseball differ, and what role does the genre (i.e. novel, play, documentary, poem, or feature film) play in enacting these differences?