The House You Pass on the Way

The House You Pass On The Way

            The House You Pass on the Way by Jacqueline Woodson was very different than what was expected based on the cover of the book. When you look at the book and think about the trend of topics we have been reading about lately, I expected that this book would be about the mis-treatment of this black girl based on her race and appearance. I mean not simply based on the cover of the book but think about what we have talked about in recent weeks:

-mistreatment of people based on sexual identity

-mis-treatment of people based on culture (Native American/Immigrants)

It really only made sense to me that the next topic we would discuss would be the mistreatment of African Americans to continue trending with our culturally diverse topics.

            With all this being said, reading a book about a girl who struggled with her sexual identity was the farthest thing from my mind before beginning to read. I mean we had already kind of hit on this topic previously. However, this book gave a different viewpoint, as it was about a girl instead of a boy and that girl was culturally different than “the normal white person” (even though we know there isn’t such a thing).

            Staggerlee is struggling to find herself, as most middle grades students do during this time. She has basically no friends because it is out in the open that she has feelings for girls and not guys. This is a tough situation to face in middle school when everything is so tough. Kids are always trying to fit in and be “cool.”

I feel like for the most part, with the right mind set, students in the middle grades could learn a lot and relate to almost all the books we have read this semester in this class. I don’t know that I would use this in a whole class but as a literacy circle book, I think it would work well for discussion.

My favorite article from this week was Patterson’s “Cultural Politics from a Writer’s Point of View.” In this, he talks about addressing what I would refer to as the uncomfortable topics in a classroom. Because most of the things we have talked about this semester have been the “uncomfortable” issues in middle grades, I thought this article was very appropriate. I know that in one of our previous classes, we talked about being the kind of teacher that takes the uncomfortable issues for students to discuss and creates an environment in which they can all be comfortable talking about them. I think this is a great point and a teacher who has created that type of environment is going to be a successful teacher.

 Lester, J. (1971).  Ben.  The long journey home: Stories from black history. (pp. 60-88).  New York, NY:  Dial. 

Paterson, K. (1994). Cultural politics for a writer's point of view.  New Advocate, 7(2), 85-91.

Woodson, J. (1997). The house you pass on the way. New York, NY: Delacorte Press.

Woodson, J. (2003). Who Can Tell My Story?  In D. L. Fox & K. G. Short (Eds.), Stories matter: the complexity of cultural authenticity in children's literature (pp. 41-45).  Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English.