Summary: Words can only describe something like the slave trade so much, so Tom Feelings uses 80 pages of fine illustrations to truly capture the imagery and pain of the journey of the Triangular Slave Trade. He illustrates the living conditions on the slave trade, the anger and anxiety of being separated from ones family, the physical punishment undergone by slaves on the trip. Pictures are sketched in black and white and grey, as seen below, really drawing out issues of race during the slave trade. Feelings does an excellent job of showing what happens in a way that telling never could.
Why it's included: Students may not bet familiar with picture books or graphic novels; they may think that the idea of them is rather childish. Feelings' book is anything but. We read about the slave trade in history and in literature, but there is only so much that words can do to express the raw emotion of it. This book provides another take on it, from the slaves' perspectives,while upholding the cliche of "a picture is worth a thousand words."
Use of text: Because this book is A.) expensive and B.) entirely illustrations, the way that I plan to use this text is break students up into assigned groups and let them pick 3-5 illustrations that they want to talk about, that they find really striking; there are a lot to pick. Then I'll ask them to write a short creative piece revolving around those selected images, translating the emotion of Feelings' illustration into words. Students in high school rarely exercise their creative muscles, but this text will provide the perfect opportunity to do so. There will be a lot of free-writing/journal entries while we use this text; students will journal about what is going on in the image, why it is powerful, why Feelings drew it that way etc. We will also take note of how the slaves are portrayed here compared to the natives in Heart of Darkness, but even in comparison to the subjects in A Passage to India and Brave New World. This text allows us to explore questions of power, but also who is telling the story and how it is told.
Illustrated Text #2: The Land of Gray Wolf by Thomas Locker, reading level range 2nd grade and up, page numbers 1-32.
Summary of text: In this piece of children's literature, Thomas Locker explore colonialism on our own homefront through the eyes of a Native American tribe and central character, Running Deer, as they are faced with European settlers coming to their lands, in a brief, illustrated snapshot of Native American history in "New World." This short text addresses the issues and anxieties that Native Americans faced during the arrival of pilgrims to the New World, such as the destruction of the homeland and diaspora of Native Americans onto reservations. It also neatly details the relationship between Native Americans and the Natural World through both text and imagery.
Why it's included: The novels that we read in this unit deal with colonization of foreign lands, but it is important to read an example of the colonization that happened here by European settlers. The concept of colonialism isn't something new that took place during the 18th-20th centuries; its roots can be traced all the way back to the arrival of the pilgrims in what we now call America. Again, high school students may think that reading a children's book is too childish for them, but this book is a perfect example of how colonialism impacts literature of all genres for all ages.
Use of text: When I teach this text to the class, we're going to do an old fashion "story time" lesson. Sometimes, the stresses of being in high school can get to you as a student, and so briefly removing students from those stresses by taking them back to a time of carefree innocence is a nice change of pace for our adolescents. The cool thing about going back and reading children's literature from the perspective of a student in high school is that it allows students to apply the knowledge that they know now to something that they would have read years ago; it shows how texts even from 2nd grade still maintain their relevance, and how meaning changes with knowledge as you go on through education. Beyond this, it relates to the content of this unit. We will continue to examine power relations between the subject and the master, while also comparing the plight of the natives in Locker's book to the plight of those that we see in the fiction texts that we will be reading. Also, our students will have read "Native Under Control" by Said, and they might choose to apply the knowledge from that text to this one.
Illustrated text #3: The Story of Babar, the Little Elephant by Jean De Brunhoff, reading level ages 4-8, pp 1-56.
Summary: Students have probably seen the image of Babar the Elephant before, even if they have never actually read the stories about him. He is a rather iconic figure in children's literature. This text tells the story, through words and illustrations, of a little elephant, Babar, whose mother is killed by hunters and escapes to the civilized world, where he befriends the Old Lady. Babar becomes civilized and educated, and eventually returns home and is crowned King of the Elephants.
Why it's included: On its surface, this is a somewhat innocent story, however there a lot of similarities between the story of Babar and the stories of the various characters in the fiction novels read in this unit. Babar's homeland is overtaken by an invading force, the hunters, who kill his mother, and he escapes into the "civilized" world where he becomes cultured and educated. This directly ties to the "civilization narrative" that is common in colonialist texts. Babar befriends someone from the dominant culture and becomes civilized, returning back to his home where he becomes King, now part of that dominant culture.
Use of the text: This piece of children's literature immediately made me thing of Aziz in A Passage To India, who also befriends and old woman who tries to get Aziz to assimilate into her world, but ultimately, it is not possible. Doing a close analysis of Babar and Aziz may help students understand A Passage To India better. It also allows us to talk about the concept of civilization in regards to colonialist texts. Often in these texts, the rationale for colonizing a foreign subject is to civilize the native savages that inhabit the land, in essence doing them a favor. However, can you really force a native subject into the world of the dominant culture? With Babar, we see the native being brought into the civilized world, while in A Passage to India (as well as the other novels), it is the civilized dominant culture that is being brought into the wild, untamed native world. What problems to these cause. How do we relate Babar and John the Savage's journeys from native world to dominant world to Adela and Kurtz's (and Marlow's) decent into the "darkness" of the Marabar Caves and Congo, respectively? This short children's book gives us a lot to discuss in regards to understanding the major novels and abstract ideas in this lesson.
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