Jess Row's Your Face in Mine - Remarkable in several ways

Your Face in Mine is a good novel.  It's the first novel I have read since starting life on #theBside here in Vancouver - which is an unusually long interval for me to go without reading a novel.  It was good to resume my reading life with a book that gives so much to think about.

Perhaps what strikes me the most about the book is that a quick scan of my search results for the title only gives the usual - a New York Times review (linked above), goodreads, amazon, Slate, the Los Angeles Times, etc.  Given the the theme and content of Jess Row's book, it seems amazing that the book didn't make the news.  Not just the news of book reviews and book clubs, but the news-news, the talking head and panel shows.

The book was published in 2014, and the Rachel Dolezal story broke in June 2015.  Remember her?  She was the white woman who 'became' an African American woman, even going so far as to be a leader for the NAACP.  Her professional life fell apart when her parents spoke out to say that, yes, their daughter was white.  As details emerged, it became clear that Dolezal had 'revised and edited' just about every aspect of her personal story.  Some elements were deleted, others added, and a host of others were like Jack's magic beans.  They became seeds for something much larger than life.

When the story broke, it consumed the mainstream media for a brief period.  There were those who were simply fascinated, and then there were those who truly found the issues raised to be both intellectually and emotionally important.  What is identity?  If race is basically a social construct, are genetics really that important?  Is it racist to appropriate someone's culture?

With all the attention her story garnered, I still can't believe that Jess Row and his novel Your Face in Mine didn't somehow leap to the fore of the media storm.  Why?  Okay, I deliberately postponed making the connection.  Row wrote a novel that one would think would have been written immediately after the Dolezal 'scandal'.  Instead, he wrote a novel about a white, Jewish man who, after a childhood and adolescence of 'racial dysphoria' seeks out the medical treatments necessary to become an African American man.

Now this book could have been nothing but a story revolving around the gimmick of adopting another racial identity.  But there really isn't anything gimmicky about the book.  Row's novel is serious, just as his character, Martin, is serious about the idea that he was basically born in the wrong body.  It's a serious literary look at identity, at who we are and what we choose to be.

Martin, a stalwart capitalist, sees choice as the new frontier of identity.  Now that medicine (in the novel) has unlocked the process by which we can become what we believe we are, a huge new market awaits.  As part of his marketing strategy, Martin hires Kelly, the one connection to his past identity, to be his putative biographer and tell his story of disconnection, discovery, and transformation.

Kelly, weighed down by his own personal story of loss, is himself a man of complicated identity.  A fluent Mandarin speaker with a now dead Chinese wife and child, he is adrift and alone.  It's partly testament to Row's writing, that I didn't connect Kelly's experience to the idea of identity at all for at least half the novel.  He is, at first, just a very sad man trying to create some kind of forward momentum for his life.  As things unfold, however, Row begins to show how a sense of belonging is as much a part of identity (racial or otherwise) as anything else.

Like I said, it's a good book.  I'm glad it didn't become popular because of Rachel Dolezal, but I am surprised that it didn't get more attention.  After all, Row actually took the time to write a thoughtful novel that examines not only the concept of racial identity but what it means to all of us to be part of something larger than us.  And he did it all before Rachel Dolezal's story broke.

I can't help but wonder if she has read it.

To Teach Is to Sometimes Not Know What to Say: The Meg - Pikachu Post

Middle School is the best.

In case you can't tell, I find a lot to love about what I do.  Sometimes what I love about teaching manifests itself in the craziest of ways - yesterday being a perfect example.

We have been working in Curation Lab on a unit on argument and persuasive writing for the past week.  Students had completed analysis of a bunch of different pieces and were now working on writing their own, with each person choosing his/her own topic.  There is a wild variety of topics waiting for me when we finish these up.  Typical of middle school, they range from the 'this is my life right now' type (limiting homework) to the deeply intellectual (security vs. personal freedom).  

Two students chose to write about the rights of LGBTQ people and/or youth.  Now keep in mind that middle school is always an intersection of the bizarre and the brilliant - one of the reasons I believe so strongly that it is the best place to be in education.  One minute you can actually have a student at break panting like a dog at your door or laughing uncontrollably because someone said 'fart', but then the next minute s/he is in class talking about social hierarchy or symbolism.  The dual nature of the middle school student is a wondrous thing. 

Meg was one of the students writing about the importance of equal rights for LGBTQ people in society.  She also asked if she could wear her Pikachu costume to class.  How do you say no to Pikachu?  What do you say when you see Pikachu/your impassioned and intelligent student writing away, researching, and even creating a bibliography to support her argument?

You just stop.  And you look.  And you realize there is nothing you can really say that captures how amazing it is to witness the intersection of the bizarre and the beautiful.  So I took a picture because, really, in this case, a picture says more about it than I ever could in words.  I can look at this photo and I can laugh, or I can look at it be moved to tears by the beauty of it.  

I showed the photo to about twenty people yesterday saying, "This is why I love what I do.  This is why middle school is like no other place."  Only one or two people really got what I was talking about, but it doesn't matter because I know how lucky I was to be there.  

To Teach Is to Stare in Wonder (The Ariel and Hammurabi post)

As part of our social studies curriculum, we do a unit called Urbanization in which we examine, at a Grade 6 level, the historical development of cities and the elements of a healthy urban environment. We study the emergence of the great Mesopotamian/Sumerian city states of the Tigris-Euphrates river valley because they are, to date, the oldest known urban societies and because the pattern of their development was basically followed by every other urban society that followed.

That pattern in summary:

discover a staple crop > gradually give up a hunter-gatherer lifestyle and settle down > greater population density > (and now in varying order) >

• increasing specialization of labour
• accumulation of wealth by some leading to social hierarchy
• clearly defined government structures (usually with power concentrated in the hands of a few)
• formal codification of law
• formalization of culture and arts
• development of infrastructure projects (like irrigation systems) that require pooled labour and resources (and directed by the government)
• organization of the means to preserve/protect public safety (armies, city walls etc.)
• monumental architecture
• systems for keeping records

Recently a group of my students was reading a pretty substantial excerpt of Hammurabi's Code, likely the oldest existing document codifying a society's laws.  Like any system of laws, it reveals a lot about the culture that produced it.  Here we see the primacy of the view of slaves as property rather than people:

"If any one take a male or female slave of the court, or a male or female slave of a freed man, outside the city gates, he shall be put to death."

Later we see the emphasis placed on respect for elders and familial roles:

"If a son strike his father, his hands shall be hewn off."

Those laws leapt (understandably) out at the kids for their violence and the cultural norms that went with them.  But then it happened [and this is where this becomes The Ariel Post].  

excerpt of Hammurabi's legal code

Ariel raised her hand and said, in her usual direct and confident way, "It's interesting how many of these laws seem to deal with controlling women's behaviour."  

Whoa.  I had to pause in wonder and because it sometimes makes me teary when students do amazing things.  

Ariel had, with no guiding question to lead her there, noticed an incredibly important aspect of Hammurabi's Code and, by extension, Mesopotamian culture.  This sent the discussion in a fabulous new direction and provided some of the boys in the class (who are sometimes a bit resistant to examining gender issues/sexism) a context that seemed to make some of them much more open to the topic.  

We had already established that Mesopotamians had not only set the pattern of urbanization that would be repeated time and again, but we had also noted some of the important cultural legacy we inherited from them.  These include aspects of law and religion, so the idea that we had not reached gender equality somehow seemed easier to accept for those students who reacted against the notion of it.  After all, if gender inequality goes back to the beginnings of our civilization, it's not about fault but instead about history.  Addressing the issue, therefore, isn't about blame but about making changes and correcting the errors of the past.   

This Ariel moment of brilliant analysis had an impact on a fair number of her peers.  Ten years down the road, they may not remember it, but I guarantee you I will.  Thanks, Ariel.  

To Teach is To Sometimes Be Amazed (The Thor Post)

Okay, before I start writing, I must acknowledge that one of the awesome parts of teaching in Thailand is having a student named Thor.  It's not his name-name, of course, but instead it's his incredible nickname.  Unlike the mead-swilling hero of Marvel comic lore or the god of Norse legend, this Thor is calm in temperament and would use words long before he lifted a hammer to solve a problem.

The Thor I know personally is an incredibly well-spoken and insightful student who often makes incredibly meaningful comments out of the blue.  While most students use youtube to find something to laugh about, Thor seems to find things to ponder.  He recently sent me the following email.

Dear Mr.__________ 

I know that this is not Homework but I have a video I found about some of the negative parts of human nature, i just want to show it to you maybe you want to share it with the class but it's up to you. It's about how people abuse their power. 

Thanks Thor

Now it took me a while to get over the daily thrill of getting email from Thor, but I will never get over the thrill of emails like this.  [Seriously, imagine looking at your inbox and seeing email from THOR.]  Thor had been reading Animal Farm as his book club novel and contemplating the question of essential human nature.  His pondering took him to the internet which took him to youtube which took him to this.  

Thor and I share some rather pessimistic views of human nature, but we also share a deep and abiding hope that we can overcome the negative aspects of our human nature.  We start our year with a study of what makes humans unique from other species, and one of the traits we look at is our ability to choose.  We are not bound by our instincts or impulses; we are shaped by them.  Thor's video led to a fantastic class discussion in which we all talked of many things but kept coming back to the end of the video.  Is our species' destruction by our own hand an inevitable result of our selfish and careless nature?  

Tragically, many of my students think it likely is.  Beautifully, they all know it doesn't have to be.  As Thor pointed out, "It all comes down to how we use our power."  If only my Thor had a mighty Mjolnir to shape the world, I know we would be in good hands.