With every new text a reader must ask, what is this? if they are to actively and critically engage in a full understanding of the text. Moreover, we have to encourage students to look not only at genre but also at authors’ intentions behind their choices of genre. Students must develop the intellectual habit of questioning a text at these levels. The alternative is assumption—assuming something is fact when it’s fiction, fiction when it’s fact, neutral when it’s biased, innocent when it’s calculating. Going along with surface-level appearances teaches minds to accept what they see without inquiry or doubt. And thus, this is where we begin, questioning the surface itself: What am I reading?
A suggested Reading Response is outlined below.
Who tells the Story?
- What is the background of the author or creator of this piece?
- How does their perspective shape the information that is presented?
- Does the author have anything to gain by telling this story?
- Is the author being sponsored by any corporation or institution?
Introducing This Reading Response to Students
Identifying and questioning the background of an author is a significant piece in fully understanding a text. A text is never just a text. An author’s identity, worldview, and experiences are all at play when writing happens. Critical readers learn to wonder about these influences when they read. Sometimes the who behind the story is not an individual but a movement or an organization. For example, the framing of information on the Fox News website is clearly different from the framing of information on the CNN site, and both are different from the BBC site. But we can teach students to go even further, wondering, for example, about the effect of Homer, a Greek, telling the story of the war between Greece and Troy. How does a text’s author(s) affect its message?
Student Examples
Who Tells the Story? for Girl, Interrupted, by Imani (grade 11)
In the book Girl, Interrupted, the author Susanna Kaysen is also the main character of the book. The book was a memoir of her experiences as an impatient individual sent to McLean Hospital in 1967. In the book, and in real life, Kaysen was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, a disorder characterized by a person’s inability to have healthy relationships with others, irrational emotions, and a false sense of self. Kaysen’s perspective shapes the information that is presented because it helps to form the story. On page 7, Susanna discusses an event in which her doctor notices a pimple on her face that she had been picking at (Kaysen, 7). Although it may seem like such a small part of the story, it helps to shape the character of Susanna, as the conversation that began with her pimple moved into the situation in which it was discussed she was being sent to the hospital. By telling this story, Kaysen gains the ability of allowing readers to hear and learn about her experiences. [TEXT: KAYSEN 1994]
Who Tells the Story? for “Nobel Lecture,” by Alyssa (grade 10)
Alexandr Solzhenitsyn was alive—and wrote his Nobel Lecture—during the Soviet period in Russia. The essay describes how art and literature bind the people of the world together. It also stressed how art can prevent people/societies from repeating past mistakes. He lived in a setting of political, social, and economic turmoil. The people needed to unite in order to overcome, and the power of the limited creative outlets they had helped them come together. Furthermore he understood the horrors that lies, violence, and propaganda could have on the world. He acknowledged that if writers start “condemning their own unsuccessful governments . . . as well as society itself” (p. 790) it would show the rest of the world what not to do. Since Solzhenitsyn lived through Soviet era Russia, he had a deep understanding of lies and violence and how art, specifically writings, could protect people from them. [TEXT: SOLZHENITSYN 1970]
First, Respond to the Student
With autobiographical pieces such as Girl, Interrupted, and real-world pieces such as Soltzhenitsyn’s Nobel lecture, students will be able to see clear connections. With fictional works, students may have to do some research. In all cases, I ask students how they learned what they learned about the author—this too is a skill, one that must be developed first if students are expected to apply that information. Students may attach emotions to what they discover about either the author’s life or the text. They may even inadvertently voice a bias they didn’t know they had. Be prepared to turn the discussion to helping the student critically examine these kinds of responses if they arise.
Second, Develop Critical Consciousness
A pressing debate today revolves around the issue of writers and actors telling stories or portraying situations they may not have lived experience with—something that may come up in this reading response. In addition, getting to know the author of a text will help students see the text in context. They can learn to look beyond a polished final product into what its original forces were—the backgrounds, cultures, and perspectives of the mind(s) that created it. This is a habit that can nurture not only critical thinking but also compassion.
