Literature for Adolescents
Living in the In-Between
This section centers the stories of people who have been forced to exist in a borderland, which Gloria Anzaldúa describes as “a vague and undetermined place created by the emotional residue of an unnatural boundary” (25). Anzaldúa used this term to refer to any identity that has forced boundaries such as nationality, sexuality, gender, etc, but I will be using it to focus on nationality. Students will always be encouraged to share their own experiences in relation to these topics because the personal is political and making that connection explicit allows for rich dialogue, greater potential for change, while also making the topics more relevant to the students. Even if I don't explicitly mention it, this is applicable to all of the following books. For the edition and year section, if there is only a year present that means the edition was not applicable and/or significant.
The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisernos
Edition and Year: 2nd Vintage Contemporaries ed., 2009.
General Writing Style or Structure (GWSS): Fiction, Prose and poetry, Vignettes of the protagonist’s life
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Themes: Family, Gender, Race/Ethnicity, Belonging, Writing, Community v. Individual
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Summary: There’s no easy way to summarize this book because the life of Esperanza Cordero, just like all of our lives, deals with everything and nothing--a sense of one coherent “plot” might not always be visible, but at its core, The House on Mango Street, is about a woman trying to find her place in a world and community that she isn’t sure wants her.
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Assessment: Students could write narratives reflecting their own journeys with their name, and/or with finding a home of their own. Students could discuss the way in which people in marginalized communities, like Esperanza, feel that they “have gone away to come back. For the ones I left behind. For the ones who cannot out,” and the benefits as well as pains this feeling can bring.
Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza by Gloria Anzaldúa
Edition and Year: 25th anniversary and 4th ed., 2007
GWSS: Memoir and History, Mix of prose and poetry in English and Spanish
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Themes: Race/Ethnicity, Gender, Nationality, Identity, Sexuality, Family, Community, Belonging
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Summary: Gloria Anzaldúa explains what she wrote better than I ever could: “[t]his book, then, speaks of my existence. My preoccupations with the inner life of the Self, and with the struggle of that Self amidst adversity and violation. . .and with my almost instinctive urge to communicate, to speak, to write about life on the borders, life in the shadows.” (From “Preface to First Edition”).
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Assessment: Students could discuss both the power of language and the ways in which language (re)produces power and social hierarchies. Students could write and/or discuss their own experiences with any of the following: Spanish v. English, language in general, marginalization, immigrating to a new place, family, etc.
Vida by Patricia Engel
Edition and Year: 2010
GWSS: Prose, Vignettes from the life of the protagonist Sabina
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Themes: Interdependence vs. Independence, Intimacy, Belonging, Gender, Power, Performance, Family, Death and Loss
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Summary: The front cover sums up the book quite nicely: “Vida follows the unforgettable Sabina as she navigates er shifting identity as a daughter of the Colombian diaspora and struggles to find her place within and beyond the net of her strong, protective, but embattled family.” Basically, Sabina’s journey is quite similar to Esperanza’s from The House on Mango Street, so if you liked that story, then you should give this one a try.
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Assessment: Students could discuss the differences between The House on Mango Street and Vida. Students could discuss the use of gender, power, and language in the book as well as how they connect, or diverge, from Anzaldúa’s depiction of those topics. Students could discuss why they think all of the books so far have utilized some form of vignette--how, if at all, does this narrative style reflect the characters' feelings of existing in the in-between, in the borderland?
The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts by Maxine Hong Kingston
Edition and Year: Vintage International Edition, 1976
GWSS: Memoir, Non-Fiction, Prose
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Themes: Gender, Race, Language, Family, Belonging, Identity and sense of self, Memory, Individual v. Community, Sane v. Insane
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Summary: Maxine Hong Kingston tells the story of growing up as a Chinese-American girl in California. Hong Kingston’s lyrical writing transports the reader to her world where the fight for a sense of belonging is never cut and dry, and sometimes the boundary between dream and waking isn’t always clear. Read on if you’d like to be able to untangle what I’m really trying to say with this summary; maybe you can even write a better one when you’re done.
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Assessment: Students can once again discuss the power of language, naming, and narratives; they can discuss the importance of story-telling throughout the memoir and how that impacts Hong-Kingston’s sense of self, community, and family. Students can discuss whether we can have agency over ourselves if we are dictated by outside forces (whether that’s parental or cultural) what we should or should not do. Students could also discuss the connection, if any, between Hong-Kingston’s experience and that of Anzaldúa.
Krik? Krak! by Edwidge Danticat
Edition and Year: 1995
GWSS: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Series of short stories
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Themes: Belonging, Identity, Race/Ethnicity, Family, Death and Loss, Gender, Nationality, Class, Colonization, Motherhood, Community v. Individual
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Summary: “Krik? Krak!” is the Haitian call and response for storytelling, and as the back cover explains this anthology examines “the lives, loves, and pains of ordinary Haitians, both in Haiti and the United States. . .explor[ing] the distance between people’s intense desires and the stifling reality of their lives.”
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Assessment: Students can discuss the ways in which European colonization impacts countries that were formerly colonized and the ways that it can (re)produce inequity and/or change culture. Relatedly, students can discuss the power of narration and how your perspective changes who the heroes and villains are in the story. Students can discuss how motherhood is portrayed throughout the stories as well as comparing and contrasting the way the various books in this section deal with motherhood. Students can also discuss how death, loss, and ancestry is viewed differently in various cultures.
"Aurora Rising" by Yamile Saied Mendez in Take the Mic: Fictional Stories of Everyday Resistance, edited by Bethany C. Morrow
Edition and Year: 2019
GWSS: Fiction, A series of short stories by various authors
Themes: Race and Racism, Family, Home, Activism, Identity, Gender, Sexuality, Body and Autonomy
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Summary: As a whole, the anthology is a collection of short stories that chronicle the activism that’s easiest to ignore and sometimes the most powerful: the acts of resistance that we enact every day. The story highlighted in this section focuses on an American-Argentinian girl who is caught between keeping a friendship and standing up for herself and her community.
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Assessment: Students can discuss the assumptions we make about people based on how they look--as in, what language the person speaks, where they were born, etc. Students can also discuss how hard it is to speak out against a friend who is used to having their way and/or always being right. Relatedly, they can also discuss when beliefs should or should not dictate the ending or continuation of a friendship. They can also discuss their own experiences of microaggressions and racism.
Dracula by Bram Stoker
Edition and Year: Norton Critical Edition, 1897
GWSS: Fiction, Gothic, Prose, A series of narratives by different characters compiled by Mina
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Themes: Nationality, Race, Gender, Sexuality, Sane v. Insane, Life v. Death/Undead, Religion v. Science
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Summary: I’m sure you’ve heard about, and most likely seen the many iterations, of Stoker’s famous vampire. Even so, nothing can prepare you for the original: full of White men who all work in different professions and each end up discovering that the creepy man from the East, is actually the evil creepy man from the East. Cue all the White men failing to save the pure (or is she?) White woman and then almost failing at saving another pure White woman. A bunch of other wacky stuff happens, including but not limited to: a crazy man who eats animals, a wild wolf, lots of blood transfusions, multiple fights and monologues, and a happy ending.
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Assessment: Students can discuss the history of colonization and the fear of the previously colonized people coming to colonize the English; they can discuss the roles of men and women in Victorian society and how that connects to the Victorian’s ideas about biological essentialism, and sexuality. Students can also discuss how much nation and nationality plays a role in Dracula’s scare factor. Relatedly, they can discuss if these fears are still present today and who/why is Dracula still seen as scary today? Students can debate whether or not Dracula is the epitome of living in the in-between, and how his story might have changed if he was the protagonist.
Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino
Edition and Year:
GWSS: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Vignettes of different cities connected by loose themes
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Themes: Identity, City vs. Empire, Visible vs Invisible
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Summary: Kubla Khan is the Mongolian emperor of China during the Yuan dynasty, and he employs Marco Polo, yeah that famous European traveler, to tell him of the cities in his empire. The following stories are what Polo saw and heard in those cities, or at least that’s what he claims. But if not cities, then what exactly could Polo be trying to tell us about?
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Assessment: Students can discuss the ability to resist in general and in an empire; they can discuss if, in this case, does it matter if Polo is telling Kubla Khan the truth about his empire? Students can discuss the relationship between city and empire and if it’s possible to have a “good” empire. The students can write their own short narratives on their home and pass it to a classmate who can rewrite it and then see the difference between the original and the paraphrase to demonstrate both the importance of words as well as why it matters who writes the story. Students can connect it to current events and look at the ways people portray different places/communities/cultures.