Summary
Stormy Seas tells the stories of five young people, across generations and time periods, who left behind all that they knew in search of peace. While the stories of each of the individuals is as unique as the people themselves, they all have a few things in common including their brave and enduring spirits that enabled each of their courageous journeys across the sea.
How did the author make the book believable? In other words, how true is the emotional reality of the story?
The very structure of this book lends itself to being believable because it features a sort of file on each of the five young boat refugees that are featured in the text. The stories are told through the perspective of the featured character using first person narration that draws upon their own experiences during each of their journeys. Because each of these stories is based upon the real life events that someone endured, the narration is seeped with emotions such as fear, pain, and hope. One particular character, Jose, recounts that “One minute, it feels like we are on the top of a mountain and the next it’s like we’re crashing down a cliff” (p.31, Leatherdale, 2017). Another character, Mohamed reiterates Jose’s point by explaining that many people have a difficult time understanding what it means to suffer because they have never experiences suffering in its fullest extent (p.55, Leatherdale, 2017). By pairing this specific language, that evokes emotion, with captivating illustrations, the author, Mary Beth Leatherdale, and the illustrator, Eleanor Shakespeare, have created a layered story that is not only more believable but also more impactful.
Classroom Connections
I would use this particular text to teach my students about the concept of wondering as they read- specifically, wondering about the author’s purpose. As I read Stormy Seas, I could not help but to continually be amazed at the response that Leatherdale was able to elicit from me as a reader. I recognized that this response was crafted by the author’s appeals to ethos, pathos, and logos.
In my own classroom, I want to encourage students to consider how they are receiving a book and even why they are receiving it in that way. I want students to learn to consider authors as a resource for them to learn from themselves not only as readers but as writers too. This could be done by asking students to respond to Stormy Seas using the following questions: How do you feel after reading this book? What part of the book really stuck out and made you feel that way? What choices did the author make that contributed to the way that you feel about this book? What do you think the author wanted you, as a reader, to gain from reading this text? Why might the author have wanted that? How can you use some of these techniques to make your own writing more persuasive?
To structure and organize these answers and ideas, I would map them using paper to create an anchor chart that focuses entirely on the techniques that the author(s) used to establish and drive their purpose. We could then classify these techniques under the three main types of appeals: an appeal to the author’s credibility, an appeal to the reader’s emotions, or an appeal to the consumer’s logic. After doing this, we could display the chart somewhere in the classroom so that students could refer back to it while constructing their own persuasive writing pieces about refugees.
Summary
After uncovering a document that recounted the sale of a group of slaves from the Fairchild Plantation, Ashley Bryan wanted to know more. She was eager to better understand the lives of those whose names were listed, and this book is the result of that wondering. With the primary document that she was provided, ample research, and her own creativity, Bryan creates a series of poems that humanize the people who were considered property in this particular sale. She provides an outlet for these eleven voices to be heard, their perspectives to be shared, and their dreams to be expressed.
What elements of the author’s style and language drew you into the book? What does the author draw upon to write the story? Are there patterns, repeated phrases, predictable structures?
All of the narration in the story is written in the form of persona poetry which I feel makes the text more accessible for readers as they navigate through a variety of story lines. In the author’s note, Ashley Bryan reflects on how her own interest was peaked about the topic after she acquired a collection of documents related to slaves. She draws upon the information in the Fairchild’s Appraisement as inspiration for the story. Bryan uses language such as “jump the broom” (p. 26, Bryan, 2016) and popular African song lyrics like, “This little light of mine, I‘m gonna let it shine” (p. 38, Bryan, 2016) to convince readers that they are hearing the thoughts of one of the Fairchild slaves. She includes two poems about each of the slaves listed- one that introduces the reader to the character and another that presents the dreams and desires that these slaves have. Throughout all of the poems, Bryan repeats a version of the phrase, “Freedom, oh freedom!” to reiterate the framework.
Classroom Connections
During student teaching, I completed a novel study with my class where I asked them to complete a series of diary entries, following sections of our reading, from the perspectives of one of the main characters. My fourth graders loved this activity, and if I’m being honest, so did I! The diary entries served as an assessment for me about what they did or did not understand from their reading, but they were so much more interesting to read than the typical summary that students turn in.
I would anticipate using Freedom Over Me as a text that could introduce this activity to the class. Personally, I think that you can tell more about a student’s understanding of a text when you allow them the opportunity to take control of the conversations surrounding it. The persona poems in Bryan’s book are a perfect jumping off point for explaining to students what it means to fully assume the perspective of someone other than yourself in your writing. I also really like the idea of using this book as a reference for how to write persona poems about characters within stories as another innovative way to check for student understanding.
Persona Poetry
In the article, “Walking Into the Wardrobe and Through the Sliding Glass Door: Writing Persona Poems with A Crack in the Sea”, authors Elizabeth Frye, Brooke Hardin, H.M. Bouwman, and Adrienne Stumb claim that persona poems serve as the wardrobe that provide readers and writers the opportunity to further investigate the characters that they have come to know (p. 2, 2018). This method is particularly useful when students are reading historical novels because it allows learners to “put themselves in the place of the main characters” and perceive them as being “human beings rather than being emblematic of an issue” (p. 30, Frye & Hash, 2013). This was especially true for me as I wrote my Stormy Seaspersona poem about Najeeba. Given the world that we live in today, it would have been easy for me to simply view her as different from me and an the “other”. But instead, I tried to challenge myself to highlight ways in which we are similar (our investment in education and an interest in reality television). It was easy to write a poem from her perspective once I had found those similarities.
I also really appreciated the template that was provided to construct our A Crack in the Sea poems. It made the task of writing the poem significantly more accessible to me as a writer because it removed the panic, and much of the fear, I personally have associated with poetry. In my own classroom, I plan to teach poetry this way- using templates to introduce this form of writing and build student confidence before encouraging them to investigate poetry using their own forms and techniques.
My Persona Poetry
Thanh
I am creative and insightful about the world around me.
I live with family that isn’t entirely my own… in a place that changes constantly.
I wonder if the people involved in the war understood that they would cause all of this.
I hear my father’s final words relaying his disappointment in me.
I see stories constantly playing in my mind- like movies.
I want to prove that I’m not a burden.
I’m as forgetful as goldfish,
but I am creative and insightful about the world around me.
I question why Sang doesn’t think that she can depend on me
because I feel that it is my job, as her brother, to protect her.
I taste the salt of the water all around me on my dry, cracked lips.
I worry that I have little useful skills
because I excel at things that others deem unimportant.
I understand that I wasn’t what Vietnam, or the first world wanted,
but I didn’t want them either.
I am creative and insightful about the world around me.
I say things that cannot be fixed or forgotten.
I believe that those harsh words can be forgiven though- Uncle Truc taught me that.
I dream of being understood, rather than being a disappointment.
I will try to use my gifts for good here in my new home- the second world.
I hope that this place, Raftworld, is where I’m supposed to be.
I was once jealous of Mai,
but now I hope to see her again.
I am creative and insightful about the world around me.
Najeeba
When I was eleven years old,
we left the mud brick house
in the Bamiyan Province.
I was born as a member of the Hazara minority,
which put my family at great risk
of being persecuted or killed by the
TALIBAN– an Islamic fundamentalist group
that enforces Sharia law
which prevents me from receiving an education.
When we escape, I find that
in Australia,
there is a different type of Taliban
who laugh at me when I don’t understand
their language.
I am given a dictionary
to learn their words
which I copy down using a pen and paper.
I’ve never held a pen or paper in my hands before.
I’m treated the same as the other children here.
We all watch television together,
Two hundred of us, crowded into the TV room
for “Big Brother”.
In some ways, the characters seem like us
except for them it’s all a game.
For us, this is our reality.
Secretly, I worry about the members of my family
who are left back home.
My thoughts constantly drift
to wondering what is outside of the fences
and when I will get to experience it.
And then
we are released
and given permission to stay
in Australia.
The place that we once fled to
for PEACE
is also going to give us POWER.
Oh EDUCATION, Oh EDUCATION,
Oh EDUCATION has freed me!
Now, I must use it to free others.
Sources
Bryan, A. (2016). Freedom over me. New York, NY: Athenum Books for Young Readers.
Bouwman, H.M. (2017). A crack in the sea. New York, NY: G.P. Putnam’s Sons an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC.
Frye, E. M. & Hash, L.A. (2013). The voices of children: Re-imagining the internment of Japanese Americans through poetry. Social Studies and the Young Learner. Retrieved from https://asulearn.appstate.edu/pluginfile.php/96944/mod_page/content/19/Frye_Internment%20Poetry.pdf.
Frye, E.M., Hardin, B. L., Bouwman, H.M., & Strumb, A. (2018). Walking into the wardrobe and through the sliding glass door: Writing persona poems with A crack in the sea. Retrieved from https://asulearn.appstate.edu/pluginfile.php/96944/mod_page/content/19/Frye%20et%20al%20VFTM_Crack%20in%20the%20Sea_Wardrobe.pdf.
Leatherdale, M.B. (2017). Stormy sea: Stories of young both refugees. Canada: University of Toronto Press.
Commentaires