Response to Swearingen/Mao and Lunsford

My Experience


When I started teaching freshman composition in the Fall of 2008, I knew that I was entering into a contact zone because I was one, teaching for first time, and two, I was teaching students from a completely different region, culture and background than my own. Although the term contact zone was not the language that I used to describe my experience, that is exactly what it was (and what it continues to be). I think that my most interesting teaching moment that semester had to do with my use of Toni Cade Bambara’s piece “Ice” and a discussion about poverty in the US in relation to MTV’s show, “Cribs.”

“Ice” is told from a child’s perspective and the child narrates a life of poverty, racism, and ageism that she sees in her community. My students did not like “Ice.” They did not really see the point of a child talking about community and her experience. I tried helping them along by writing and reflecting about the story, by analyzing it … that seemed to help a bit. Juxtaposed with “Ice,” we watched several clips of the MTV show, “Cribs.” We talked about the idea of community, how it is portrayed (or not portrayed) on “Cribs” and what should or could be alternatives to showing truth in the media (and we had a conversation about what constitutes truth). Most students identified that “Cribs” portrays the wealthiest houses and niceties of celebrity life because it is marketable; it’s what audiences want to see. For the official writing assignment, I asked students to recreate a scene of “Cribs” using the information that we visited about community and what it means. I had to push students to really go beyond what they saw in the media to research and find information about a celebrity on “Cribs” (or one they wanted to see on the show) to recreate an episode that shows a more realistic side of that person and their community. I also asked them to talk about how concepts learned in “Ice” relate to their episode.

After reading all of the papers, I realized that most of my students did not make the connection that I thought that I was conveying. What I recognized as a problem (about poverty, about media portrayals, and about reality) was not necessarily a problem to the majority of my students … or maybe, they just did not want to write about the problem. I thought that I was engaging in what Swearingen and Mao note as a type of “cross-cultural analysis” (43), one that “pushes [students] up against the evasions, self-deceptions, investments in opinions and interpretations, the clutter that blinds, that disguises that underlying, all-encompassing design” (Toni Cade Bambara). But, there were some gaps. There were some points of misidentification; I did not fully uncover the blind spots so that “binocular vision [could be used to see] us and them through the contact zone” (43). I labeled the project as a failed one because most of my students simply rehashed an episode without really critically researching and taking into consideration our readings and discussions.

I mention this experience because it was all I could think about while reading Lunsford’s interview with Gloria Anzuldua. When the women speak about teaching and deviating from traditional models and readings, I am reminded of what I try to do in my own pedagogy. Anzuldua speaks about this idea of assimilation and how “there is something very seductive about fitting in, and being apart of this one culture, and forgetting differences, and pretty soon instead of subverting and challenging and making marks on the wall, you get taken in” (59). This statement is compelling for me as it states a constant battle to move out of a system that teaches the status quo. I feel like a historian, an activist, and an agent for change, but I find myself facing real resistance when it comes to recognizing real truths of history and how it continues to impact our thinking in and out of the contact zone. So, in terms of my experience, the business was “on Front Street,” but nobody wanted to deal with the business. I think, however, that I made progress with just talking about the issue...by making students aware of the situation.

Andulzua notes that “language is a representational system …but what happens with language, this particular symbolic system, is that it displaces the reality, the experience, so that you take the language to be the reality” (63). Anzuldua’s comments stands as what I was trying to get my students to see with “Cribs.” I was trying to show how media displacing reality and focuses one the glimmer and glamour when there are real issues that need to be looked to. Although this piece is a bit milder than other pieces that I have read by Anzuldua, after reading it, I do have a renewed faith and hope in this assignment. The statements that she made caused me to reflect on my teaching and in many ways confirms my need to to occupy such a space. I have yet to try this particular assignment again (although I do use “Ice” because Toni Cade Bambara she is one of my favorite thinkers), but I hope to revisit the assignment some time in the near future.