A Kid Named A.

by Michael Copperman

A., a tall, thin kid from North Portland, A. of the backward cap and the swaggering slouch, was so confused about his thesis in class that he sat tapping his pencil and shifting in his seat all class long. He needed to identify the reason he felt speech regulations on college campuses should be banned. He wanted to say “freedom of speech” was the reason, and I asked him why freedom of speech was useful to students on college campuses, and he frowned, furrowed his brow, shrugged and then stared down at what he had written as if the words might appear on the page through sheer intensity of stare. 

After class, he lingered at the front of the classroom and asked again, “What should I say?” “What you think is right and makes sense,” I told him, and despite his persistence, I would not give him “the answer.” That attitude of “just tell me” is common among even the better students who make it to college out of our overcrowded and under-resourced public schools: they care about doing well, but have rarely been asked to figure things out themselves, let alone had their own opinions valued and evaluated on clarity and merit. We went in circles, and finally he stood with his hands at his sides in despair. 

I left him in the classroom and walked back across campus through a light rain, the yellowing and browning leaves of November waving against the white sky, and I felt tired, drained by the sense I have sometimes that I am doing nothing and accomplishing nothing, wasting my days teaching writing at a mid-tier public university in a provincial little town. I wondered if perhaps I should have thrown him a bone and given him choices of possible positions, and decided I’d email him so he didn’t feel abandoned. 

Out in front of the building that houses my office, I stopped to adjust my bag on my shoulder, heard the sound of soles slapping pavement behind me, and turned to see A. loping across the lawn. He was breathing hard, and when he reached me he put his hands to his knees and caught his breath and said, “Mr. Mike, could I say that they—the speech codes—prevent honest communication between people trying to learn?” 

I swear, his earnest face, the clarity of the statement and the fact he’d come to it himself, made all the entire gray winter irrelevant. 

“That sounds exactly right,” I said, and as he grinned and took out his phone and began to write his thesis on the mobile device, I clapped him on the shoulder and waited for him to finish. Then I walked on, past my office toward the library because that seemed the direction he was going, A. walking a little ahead and talking faster as he caught his breath, telling me how he’d come up with it, and what examples he had about how in the real world nobody is going to save you from the offensive things that were out there that people thought, the hate some have in their hearts, how you have to confront racists head on, and more than that, how we have to actually talk about things as they are, to say what we mean even when that isn’t easy, and how he had an example of his friend D.  from back home at Jefferson High, and could he use it, would it work, did I think? 

I told him yes, I did think. But really, I was glad that he’d thought.

For one of my first lessons for a persuasive writing residency at a high school, I shared SojournerTruth’s “Ain’t I a Woman?” speech given during the Women’s Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio in 1851.  A debate was raging about whether women “deserved” the right to vote.  After a male critic stated women were too physically, thus mentally, weak to vote, Sojourner stepped to the podium and spoke: “The man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or give me any best place! And aint’ I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain’t I a woman?”

Through her refutation of someone else’s definition of what it meant to be a woman, Truth touched upon the vast divide between the experiences of white and African-American women.  She questioned not only the notion of womanhood but personhood at a time when slavery was still legally practiced.

Born into slavery in 1797 in Ulster County, New York, Truth escaped with her baby daughter in 1826. After receiving a spiritual message to travel the land, she re-named herself Sojourner Truth and journeyed the country speaking on the rights of slaves and women both free and in bondage. Once students were intrigued by Truth’s background, we read the speech aloud.  In one class, we listened to Maya Angelou’s recording of Truth’s speech (a fabulous suggestion made by one of the classroom teachers with whom I collaborated on this residency).  We discussed how Truth persuaded her audience to understand her point of view by re-defining the central term in the conflict and how she used repetition, refrain, and poetry.

For the writing portion, I asked students: “What is it that people say you can’t do?”  Through a group brainstorm, we wrote phrases on the board: “Can’t finish high school,” “Can’t go to heaven,” “Can’t be in love,” etc.

Based on the brainstorm, students wrote their own “Ain’t I a —-?” pieces. They wrote funny pieces, mocking stereotypes of being Asian, thoughtful pieces about being gay and denied entry into heaven, as well as gender-bending pieces which upturned Sojourner’s original question.

Sojourner Truth is considered to be one the first to openly address the peculiar position of women of color in American feminism.  For further development of this lesson, I have taught her speech alongside Angela Davis’s essay, “The Anti-Slavery Movement and the Birth Of Women’s Rights” Howard Zinn’s “Slavery without Submission, Emancipation without Freedom” and Toni Morrison’s “Beloved.” 

Through these juxtapositions, deeper historical questions can be asked about the relationship between abolition and suffrage, the realities of slavery and emancipation, and notions of womanhood, personhood, freedom, and truth. 

-Bushra Rehman

Bushra Rehman is a T&W teaching artist who writes poems, essays and short stories.  You can read more about Bushra here.

Further Reading:

An excellent book for poets who are nervous about teaching Persuasive Writing:
The Art of Persuasion: A National Review Rhetoric for Writers (Bridges and Rickenbacker, 1993) 
Women, Race, & Class by Angela Davis
A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn

Student Writing:

Ain’t I Asian?

       Well, Children, where there is so much racket there must be something out of kilter. I think that ‘twixt the nerds of the South to the dorks of the North, all talking about the Asian phenomenon, the Asian people will not be in a fix pretty soon. But what’s all this here talking about?

       That nerd over there says that all Asians are getting 2400 in SAT, and lifting over Princeton, and having the best boring jobs everywhere. Nobody ever finds me with high SATs, or Ivy Leagues, or gives me any doctor, lawyer, or engineering jobs. And ain’t I Asian? Look at me! Look at my eyes! I have stayed on staring at computers, and slept for 11 hours, and no race could head me! And ain’t I Asian? I could work out as much and be lazy as much as a White man – because I could – and listen to U2 as well! And ain’t I Asian? I have borne Kumon, and seen most all sold off to overly competitive wealthy parents, and when I cried out with my Asian’s shame, none but Buddha heard me! And ain’t I Asian?

       Then they talk about this thing in the head; what’s this they call it? [member of audience whispers, "nerdiness"] That’s it, honey. What’s that got to do with an Asian’s life or nerd’s life? If my cup won’t hold but a quart, and yours holds a pint, wouldn’t you be mean not to give praise that I have a quart of nerdiness?

       Then that little man in black, he says Asians can’t have as much creativity as them, ’cause free thinking wasn’t for Asians! Where did your gunpowder come from? Where did your Nintendo come from? From God and Asians!

       If the first Asian God ever made was strong enough to make the culture upside down all alone, these Asians together ought to be able to turn it back, and get it right side up again! And now they are asking to do it, the other races better let them.

       Arigatou and XieXie to you for hearing me, and now yellow Asian ain’t got nothing more to say.
- Anonymous

Ain’t I a Woman?

Just because I may be
a little different (special)
or not seen as a biological
woman . . . . Ain’t I a Woman? 

I mean. . . I look like any
one of your daughters, sisters, nieces
girlfriends, or mother. . . 
Ain’t I a Woman ?

The way I dress to the way
I speak, to the way I brush my hair
to the way I strut down the street
you would see me as any other woman.

So why look at me different?
Know just because I’m sharing
out to you the way I
was born to the way I think . .
to the way I carry
myself in the street

Let me just remind you
I am a woman!
-Anonymous

Ain’t I Human?

You say it’s an abomination
to be gay.
You say I can still be saved,
or that I’m too far gone in
my wicked ways.
There’s no room in Heaven for
someone like me.
But ain’t I human?
Aren’t we all equal?
What makes you different from me?
We both read and walk and talk.
We both have morals. We both love.
Is that not human?
You haven’t killed anyone or
committed adultery. I haven’t either.
We’ve both lied and stole.
We’ve both been jealous.
You place your money
and family before God.
And I place the truth before both.
Are we not the same?
Does God not say he loves us all?
If God is only love, and love
does not judge,
doesn’t God love me?
Doesn’t God not care
that I’m gay?
Doesn’t God not care
that you’re a bigot?
Aren’t we human?
-Liz