African American Read-In

Texts by Aaron McGruder, Natasha Trethewey, Dudley Randall, Octavia Butler, and Nikki Giovanni

Recently, Professor Martin and I worked with a local high school instructor to plan an African American Read-In as part of Black History Month.  The National Council of Teachers of English encouraged people (teachers, community members, church goers, anybody) to host events where those in attendance could engage with and discuss African American literary productions.  It is exciting to consider that, throughout Black History Month, there are groups across the country who are taking time to think about Black literature in meaningful ways (of course, what would be more exciting is if people were always thinking about and reading Black literature, but that's a topic for another time).

This event at Nimitz High School was pretty incredible for various reasons.  The teacher, Jill Aufill, gathered her high school AP English class in the library where we could spread out a bit and have a computer and projector available.  Additionally, Professor Martin asked his college students to meet us at the high school (nearly 20 students from his Resistance Literature course).  So, it was a great mix of college and high school students, sitting and talking through their ideas related to African American Poetry.  We worked in groups to examine various selections by poets such as Maya Angelou, Amiri Baraka, Nikki Giovanni, and Tracie Morris.  We listened to audio files of several poets reading their works.  Additionally, the students and attendees watched and commented on a performance of "Hair" by Zai Sadler and Tova Charles, two African American women who were recently in Houston as part of Write About Now, a weekly poetry hour.

We ended the African American Read-In with a book raffle - our librarians at North Harris were able to utilize funding to purchase a handful of texts by Black authors that we gave to the high school students (see the books above).

We were thrilled to see so many folks from high school and college spaces coming together to think about African American poetry in productive and thought-provoking ways.  It was something to see 50 people intently reading through poetry packets, reading the poems out loud, and thinking through content, form, language, sound, identities, and more.