Un-Braided Essay

Lillian Guerra, Ph.D., is the author of many scholarly essays as well as three books, Popular Expression and National Identity in Puerto Rico; The Myth of Jos Mart: Conflicting Nationalisms in Early Twentieth-Century Cuba; and Visions of Power: Revolution, Redemption and Resistance in Cuba, 1959-1971. Her creative writings include contributions to the works of renowned photographers Alex Harris and Cathryn Griffith, as well as two collections of Spanish-language poetry, one published in Quito, Ecuador, and the other in Havana, Cuba. The daughter of Cuban exiles who came to the United States in 1965, she has lived, researched, and taught courses in Cuba over the course of 38 visits in the last 15 years. From 1996 to 1998, Dr. Guerra lived in Cuba for the first time and in addition to researching her dissertation, she came to know more than a hundred close relatives in Cienfuegos, Havana, and Pinar del Ro. Dr. Guerra taught Latin American history at Bates College for four years and Caribbean history at Yale University for six years. She is currently an Associate Professor of Cuban and Caribbean History at the University of Florida, Gainesville. A graduate of Dartmouth College, she received her Ph.D. degree in History from the University of Wisconsin.

In celebration of this conversation between Rebecca Foster and Julie Marie Wade, author of a spectacular collection of essays exploring identity, queer visibility, feminism, and so much more, we dusted off a proprietary poem which points to the creative energy needed to live fully.

Un-Braided Essay

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Many facets of my personal history, including my life as a woman, a professor, a poet, and someone who often feels out of place in the more fashion-conscious sectors of Miami, were ultimately braided into that essay, but it was the time-traveling memory to a grocery store all the way across the country and thirty years back in time that made itself known as a must-write, must-explore, must-see-where-this-leads literary investigation.

The image of the braid is powerfully suggestive of attempts to reconcile threads that are sometimes difficult to reconcile. In this way, the braided essay can be a helpful teacher: an exercise in creative nonfiction that encourages non-linear storytelling. Three narratives are brought together by connecting words or images that puts the threads into conversation with each other. This can be a refreshing change of pace in the ELA classroom, where so much essay writing instruction is built around the five-paragraph essay rarely seen outside the classroom.

How would you teach the braided essay in your classroom? How can we rethink the role of essay writing in school? Share your reflections in the comments below or find me on Twitter @dispatches_b222.

[3] For a sample of the literature, see J.C. Cooper, An illustrated encyclopedia of traditional symbols (London: Thames & Hudson, 1978), p.77; Ad de Vries, Dictionary of symbols and imagery (London & Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Company, 1974), pp.231-4; W. Cooper, Hair: sex, society, symbolism (London: Aldus, 1971); E. R. Leach, 'Magical hair,' Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 88 (1958): 147-63; C.R. Hallpike, 'Social hair,' Man 4 (1969): 254-64; P. Hershman, 'Hair, sex and dirt,' Man 9 (1974): 274-98; G. Obeyesekere Medusa's hair: an essay on personal symbols and religious experience (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981); and, for the Freudian classic, C. Berg, The unconscious significance of hair (London: Allen & Unwin, 1951).

[76] Tang Zhijun, ed., Zhang taiyan zhenglun xuanji [Selected political essays of Zhang Binglin] (Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, 1977), p.195. Li Chien-nong, The political history of China, 1840-1928, transl. Ssu-yu Teng and J. Ingalls (Princeton, N.J.: Van Nostrand, 1956), p.191.

Powell provided a strict classroom that instilled a sense of self-discipline in the young Ammons. Speaking to the entire student body, Baldwin praised the 14-year-old Ammons' essay on small cows that produced significant quantities of milk. ("This was my first good review," Ammons once said.) Smith instilled a love of biology, and, though Ammons never took a course from Miles, she read and commented upon his early poetry in a way that gave him hope for success in that realm of endeavor.

A UTSC student has won an undergraduate research prize with an essay that challenges preconceptions around the history of the Michif Nation, and calls for decolonization of the Canadian Education system. be457b7860