So I'm only a little ways into Tatum's Teaching Reading to Black Adolescent Males and already I am struck by his straightforward and common sense style, firmly rooted in his own personal experiences. I'm only on Chapter 3 and already he's brought so much up...but in my head I'm hearing a song as I read, "Heart of the City," which I thought was only a Jay Z song, but come to find out that Whitesnake did it first. Interesting to hear the two versions:
I also just recently heard Chris Rock's piece on welfare (thanks to Sirius Radio), and one line stood out to me (and this is right before I sat down to read): you get more respect as a black man coming out of jail than you do coming out of school.
Back to reading.
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2 comments:
Some of the funniest comedians have enough going on to be sociologists and historians -- Chris Rock is certainly one of them (nasty supermarkets in Black neighborhoods versus the spiffy ones in white neighborhoods). So is Dave Chappelle -- and Some of Whoopi's earlier stand up work falls into this category -- she did these characters that would come up over and over -- two stand out. The heroin addict, and the little girl who puts a yellow cardigan on her head and flips it around as she imagines she has long "yellow" hair. It's heartbreaking -- and so in-your-face that it's funny (hey, how DOES that work?) Clips of some of this work minus the f-ing profanity for class use might be fodder for some amazing discussions.
You are so right! Why is it that the element of humor makes it so much easier to confront these topics? The profanity is interesting to me too, I think if we left it out it'd change the feel. Plus I think it'd be funny. :-) Thanks for the great comment.
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