The Parker Inheritance by Varian JohnsonOver the past few weeks, I have had opportunities to read some of the best children's literature I have ever read. This week I read The Parker Inheritance by Varian Johnson. Holy cow. This book was one of the most heart wrenching pieces to move through. The story follows a pair of young, black, teens who are investigating an unsolved mystery in their hometown. As they uncover more secrets and clues, the story flashes back to another "colored" family from nearly 60 years before their time. The family has endured Jim Crow laws and the new freedom from slavery, but as time went on they also endured the civil rights movement, full of oppression and violence. The two sets of characters become more and more intertwined as the mystery continues to unravel, and the entire book is so captivating, it is hard to put the book down. In fact, I read the while book in one sitting. I couldn't put the book down because of the heartwarming moments between the main character, Candice, and her friend, Brandon. There are touching scenes between fathers and daughters and new relationships, but there are also scenes of absolute heartbreak from violence, mistreatment, and illness. This book has everything, and I truly think reading it has changed my perspective and made me a better person. Most of the value from this book came from the historical relevance it offered. The stories of these characters offered a point of view has been unheard and purposefully unobserved for too long. Not only that, but the stories took those perspectives and drew them out over time to focus attention on the prevalence of these seemingly civil-rights-era issues in our modern society. The stereotypes of black communities that we see today stem from pervasive treatment of these communities over time. As Brittany Barron described in her TEDx Talk (see link below) so well, it takes 10,000 hours of practice to become an expert at a certain skill. In terms of the dehumanization and misrepresentation of black communities in America, our country has spent 294 10,000 hour unites practicing these awful skills. That means, we have become experts in these skills 294 times over a span of roughly 335 years. Because these archaic practices have gone virtually unchanged for centuries on end, we still see prejudices affecting the lives of one race. Varian Johnson wrote an article summarizing his purpose for writing The Parker Inheritance (Johnson, 2019). This book was deeply personal to this author because of his own personal experiences as a black man in American society. Johnson grew up in Florence, South Carolina, so this book was based on his own home town. In his article he referenced an experience as a teenager where he and his identical twin brother were called out by a police officer for suspicion of possessing drugs because they looked like they had "never met." This experience was only resolved after the officer searched their belongings and found nothing. After the search was complete, the officer walked away without apologizing. In The Parker Inheritance, the two main characters, Candice and Brandon, were scrutinized and accused of breaking into the school during off hours simply because of the color of their skin. These two events have strong parallels and are so meaningful because the author was writing about these personal experiences as a marginalized citizen in an own-voice perspective, and these experiences are the cause of historical mistreatment of race spanning centuries. The significance of this is that readers have a greater potential to interact with and glean meaningful truths from books of own-voice authors, and we need our students to begin to make and be the change for these marginalized communities. Connecting Themes Between TextsThe texts we give our readers must be purposeful so that our readers can gain as much insight and perspective of the world around them as possible. Varian Johnson's book, The Parker Inheritance, is one great text to help our readers develop insights and perspectives. Another thing I want to propose is teachers need to be strategic and purposeful of are the texts we pair with one another. One article by Fenice Boyd, Lauren Causey, and Lee Galda (2015) argued that the literature we give students needs to be culturally diverse, meaning that "teachers need more books that depict diverse lifestyles, opportunities, beliefs, choices, and worldviews in addition to books that focus on the status quo." Books that are culturally diverse eliminate the dangers of single stories because students learn to see their own perspectives represented, as well as others perspectives while also understanding how to empathize with those newly discovered perspectives. We can introduce culturally diverse books in several ways. An incredibly thorough feature article by Lisa M. Ciecierski (2017) defines the term "intertextuality" and then gives four examples of ways to practice this in a classroom. Intertextuality refers to the ability to analyze two or more texts. These texts may be analyzed in various ways, regarding both similarities and differences of the texts, but it is important to note that intertextuality enhances student learning from text due to the various perspectives given. In addition to the enhancement of student learning, teachers also begin to better grasp teaching connected texts, which is an outlined Common Core State Standard. This standard states that students must "analyze how two or more texts address similar themes or topics in order to build knowledge or to compare the approaches authors take." Intertextuality allows us as teachers facilitate this learning for our students. Here are some approaches to intertextuality that Ciercierski outlined in her articles realted directly to the The Parker Inheritance: 1. Companion Texts are texts that offer variations of one single story. Example: If Varian Johnson wrote a book from the perspective of any other character in this book besides Candice, I could pair that book with The Parker Inheritance as a companion text. A variation of the same story would be told, but from different perspectives. 2. Corresponding Texts are texts that are connected by THEME (not topic) specifically to bring light to the theme. Example: If I paired The Parker Inheritance with the TEDx Talk I referenced above, What Beyonce Taught Me About Race, by Brittany Barron. These two texts both discuss the social injustices of black individuals in America over large spans of time. A possible theme to connect these could be the hashtag I named this week's post: History As Modern Day. 3. Contradictory Texts are texts that have various perspectives on a given topic that contradict one another. Example: If I paired The Parker Inheritance with a summary of the Brown V. Board of Education case, these two texts would contradict one another. The Parker Inheritance very clearly illustrates the lack of integration even after legislation was passed to ensure integration was mandated; however, a summary of the Brown V. Board of Education case is a monumental supreme court case that integrated schools in America in 1954. If that were fully true, these text would contradict the time it took to integrate, not only schools, but a society, which is crucial information to understand and pick up while reading The Parker Inheritance. 4. Cluster Texts are texts that are paired together so readers can learn about topics in a "meaningful way." Example: If I paired The Parker Inheritance with an infographic from Living Cities (link in resources), these two texts would be cluster texts, because they expand on the topic of racism by explicitly defining where racism can occur. The Parker Inheritance does an incredible job at narrating face-to-face instances of racism; however, the infographic describes various areas racism can be seen and experienced in the lives of black individuals. Sources & ResourcesA Day in a Life Infographic: https://medium.com/@Living_Cities/a-day-in-a-life-how-racism-impacts-families-of-color-infographic-963354857dce
Tedx Talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDzj9vRw5yM&feature=youtu.be Boyd, F. B., Causey, L. L., & Galda, L. (2015). Culturally diverse literature: Enriching the variety in an era of common core state standards. The Reading Teacher, 68(5), 378-387. Ciecierski, L. M. (2017). What the common core state standards do not tell you about connecting texts. The Reading Teacher, 71(3), 285-294. Johnson, V. (2018). The parker inheritance. New York, NY: Scholastic Inc. Johnson, V. (2019). The story behind the parker inheritance. Retrieved from http://varianjohnson.com/books/the-parker-inheritance/story-behind-parker-inheritance/
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