The focus of this bibliography is the relationship between people and their governments. Specifically, the texts chosen explore the ways that an adolescent can support, fight, or otherwise interact with his or her government. The population intended for these texts is high school seniors. This is a particularly important age for students to consider their relationship to government, because they will be legally recognized adults after graduation and most will be eligible to vote. I teach a class to high school seniors called Participation in Government, and this list of texts will help support my students learning.
Students often tell me “I hate politics” or “I don’t care about any issues” or “News is boring.” Texts can draw adolescent readers in, and the texts below will draw them into stories that deal with the very topics that often leave them feeling apathetic. According to Bean and Moni (2003), exploring identity construction in adolescent literature “provide[s] a roadmap of sorts for adolescents coping with these issues in real life.” By providing literature that features protagonists interacting with their governments, students can see a model of active citizenship. Bean and Moni (2003) also note that such literature “offers a unique window on society conflicts and dilemmas.” By selecting texts that explore real problems in society, and allowing students to respond to those texts in authentic ways, critical literacy can act as a tool for change. Using literature as a bridge between thought and action, teachers can empower students to actively engage in their government instead of simply letting government direct them.
Although my purpose in creating this bibliography is very specific, these texts are appropriate for a variety of age groups and would be useful to any secondary teacher who chooses to employ critical literacy in the classroom. Themes like civic duty, the consent of the governed, and civil rights are common threads throughout this text set. Some books, like Code Talker and The Rock and the River are meant for a younger audience (grades 6-9), but this offers a choice to struggling readers. If readers find prose too difficult to comprehend, they might focus too much on decoding and lose the meaning of the text. I made an attempt to offer texts that would interest advanced readers as well, such as Little Brother and The Hunger Games. Persepolis is a nonfiction graphic novel, which should interest visual learners and the artistically inclined. Boys might gravitate towards books with male protagonists and miltary themes, while girls might lean towards the books with female protagonists and an emphasis on relationships. Youth Journalism International and Invisible Children are both web-based organizations that connect people around the world and inspire social action. I would offer a choice to students when using this text set, because the goal of this project is to allow students to find characters with whom they can identify. This connection will help them explore their own thoughts and convictions about government and inspire them to take action.
Little Brother
Doctorow, C. (2008). Little Brother. New York: Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.
Little Brother opens in a San Francisco a few years after the 9/11 attacks. Se
venteen-year-old Marcus Yallow (better known to some by his online handle “W1n$t0n”) has just convinced his best friend Darryl to skip past the high-tech security at his school for a sort of web-based treasure hunt around the city. Minutes later, terrorists attack the Bay Bridge. In the ensuring chaos Marcus and his friends are taken into custody by the Department of Homeland Security, separated, and held at an unknown location for interrogation. Marcus is released a few days later, but Darryl is not, and Marcus finds the city he loves transformed. Homeland Security officers stake out street corners and demand random searches; new surveillance tracks citizens’ travel and purchases; Marcus even finds evidence that the government has been in his bedroom. That’s when he decides to fight back using his technological savvy, and he becomes the inadvertent leader of a movement to take his city back from a government gone corrupt. Cory Doctorow has written a completely believable seventeen-year-old protagonist. Teens will find Marcus easily identifiable, and the setting of a public school in a post-9/11 world makes the novel very easy to settle into. Students will find his methods of techno-sabotage intriguing. They will probably start to root for Marcus early on when he outsmarts his bully of a principal, and that support will only grow when he becomes a crusader for civil rights.
Marcus models one important way to interact with government: questioning authority. Little Brother imagines what might happen in America if there is another major terrorist attack and our citizens decide that they value security over liberty. When I discuss the issue of national security with students, many of them dismiss elevated measures like airport searches as a necessary part of the War on Terror. However, pushing them to see the potential danger of invasive security measures is easier when using a novel like this to provide a vivid illustration.
If I was to use Little Brother in my class, I would ask students to research exactly what the expanded powers of the government are during a national security threat. Students could write their own “what if” scenario, or they could create an alternate ending for the story. Doctorow provides an excellent counter-argument for Marcus’s anti-government crusade in the form of Marcus’s father. Students could partner up and create skits in which one student acting as Marcus and the other acting as Mr. Yallow discuss a national security issue. Of all of the novels on this list, Little Brother is probably the easiest for students to relate to. That makes it a valuable resource to get students to make connections between their own society and Marcus’s, and to understand the role they might play in preventing one from becoming the other.
COOL NOTE: The entire text of this book is available to download for FREE in practically every format imaginable here: http://craphound.com/littlebrother/download/
For his explanation of why he does this crazy thing, go here: http://craphound.com/littlebrother/about/#freedownloadCode Talker
Bruchac, J. (2005). Code Talker: A novel about the Navajo marines of World War Two. New York: The Penguin Group.
Ned Begay was only six years old when he was taken from his Navajo family and placed in a government boarding school. He draws heavily on his Navajo heritage to guide him through life, even though American society tries to drive it out of him. At age sixteen, Ned enlists in the U.S. Marines as a World War II code talker. His native language is key to the war effort, and due to that skill he becomes a valuable asset as his unit island-hops across the Pacific. The narrative unfolds as an oral tale that a much-older Ned tells to his grandchildren, and his sincerity is mesmerizing and moving. This is a novel that is more likely to appeal to boys due to its military content. Its reading level is grades 6 to 9, making it an easy read for most high school students. Interest in military history and code talking will likely draw readers in, but Joseph Bruchac’s tone and detail will keep them reading. Honest but never preachy, Ned’s story gives a credible and affecting account of a young man at war.
When compiling this list of texts, I realized that many of the titles feature protagonists who fight against a sinister government. I decided to add this text as a counter-balance. The class that I teach encourages active participation in government, which includes questioning and challenging those in power, but it also involves serving your country. Many young people decide to join the military while they are in high school, and a book like this can give them an honest account of life in war. There are more contemporary novels about teenaged soldiers, but I chose this text for its unique view of citizenship from the perspective of someone whose cultural identity is eschewed by the government. The fact that Ned feels a sense of duty despite that attitude is something that students can view as commendable or naïve. A class debate could be organized around that discrepancy. Military recruiters, veterans, and peace advocates could be brought in as a panel of guest speakers. Students could prepare questions for the panel and write them letters of thanks after they leave, expressing their opinions of military service based both on the panel and the novel. In the end, my hope is that this text will cause students to think more deeply about civic duty and military service and to consider what their contribution to our nation’s security might be.
The Rock and the River
Magoon, K. (2009). The Rock and the River. New York: Aladdin.
In 1968, thirteen-year-old Sam Childs lives in Chicago with his loving family. His father is a non-violent civil rights leader and personal friend of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.. His older brother, ignoring his father’s example, joins the Black Panthers. Sam is caught in the middle between the two, but after Dr. King’s assassination, he takes off with his brother. After Sam’s father’s stabbing, the teen becomes even further militarized by the seeming futility of peaceful protest in the face of so much racism and oppression. Sam needs to decide which philosophy he will follow to fight for justice in America. Boys in particular might identify with the bonds that Sam shares with his father and brother. The reading level is lower, so its content is accessible to struggling readers.
This text asks students what their response should be when the relationship that they have with their government is one of oppression and disrespect. All students should know about the Civil Rights Movement and Martin Luther King Jr.. However, few will have been taught about the militant arm of the movement, and even fewer will have learned it from someone as fair-minded as Magoon. By starting with a familiar subject, teachers can bridge the knowledge gap to discuss the modern revolutions in Africa and the Middle East. Should protestors use violence of nonviolence to win their rights? Where else in the world today to people struggle under a regime that sees them as second-class citizens, and how might the students help? After reading about two options in Magoon’s book, students can have a more thoughtful dialogue about the real decisions that contemporary people face around the world.
The Hunger Games
Collins, S. (2008). The Hunger Games. New York: Scholastic Inc.
The Hunger Games takes place in North America after series of natural disasters and wars. In the resulting chaos, people fall under the control of a dictatorship, trading their rights for a sense of order. The unrestrained extravagance of the ruling class in the Capitol contrasts with the stark lives of the toiling masses in the twelve districts under their control. Each year, the Capitol demands tribute, one boy and one girl from each district. These tributes are forced to fight to death in an arena in front of a television audience for national entertainment. Among this year’s tributes is unlucky sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen of District 12. Katniss has to decide if and how to fight back against a government that views her life as meaningless.
This novel is the first in a series of three, but it will draw adolescents in by the end of the first chapter. Katniss’s desperate fight for survival is riveting. Girls might enjoy the love triangle, and boys might enjoy the competition and combat strategy. This book is a page-turner, and it is hard for a reader of any age to put this book down. Still, The Hunger Games has particular value for adolescents. Many adolescents won’t think deeply about the origins, purposes, and operation of their government without teacher guidance. Even with guidance, concepts like Rousseau’s social contract can seem irrelevant to their lives. Themes like justice, inequality, and the value of human life are paramount in The Hunger Games. The novel can shake students out of their complacency if you ask them the right questions.
Readers will feel Katniss’s outrage and despair when she is selected as a tribute. Teachers can take those strong reader reactions and ask students what they think about her situation. Was it wrong for the districts to attempt a revolution against the Capitol? That can lead to a discussion about the right of the people to overthrow a corrupt regime in John Locke’s Two Treatises on Government. When students see the opulence of the capital and understand that their children do not have to enter the tribute lottery, teachers can discuss the importance of equality under the law. Students can find a court case based on the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment and create a presentation that makes comparisons to the novel, or write a mock-trial script in which Katniss sues for equal protection. Adolescents will despise the District’s suffocating rule. Let them interpret Benjamin Franklin’s quote, “Those who would sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither.” Then have them choose characters from the novel and act out a debate about the Franklin quote while role-playing those characters. The Hunger Games is a science fiction story, but it is also a powerful allegory that raises important questions. Through their connection to Katniss, critical questions about government will be more vital and thought provoking.
(side note: I am obsessed with the entire series now, and found this awesome bit of fan art that I thought I should share. It shows Katniss, Peeta, and Gale, for those of you in the know. Click here!)
The Complete Persepolis
Satrapi, M. (2007). The Complete Persepolis. New York: Pantheon.
Growing up in Tehran during the Islamic Revolution isn’t easy, especially for a young girl with a feminist streak and an appreciation for Michael Jackson. Marjane Satrapi records her memoirs as a graphic novel, starting with her early childhood in Iran during the Islamic revolution. The memoir begins at age ten when she is forced to wear the veil at school. As a child, Marjane’s parents fought against the Islamic fundamentalists, and Marjane herself was outspoken and politically aware even as a child. Partly as a result of that predisposition, her parents sent her to Europe for school when the revolution grew more dangerous. In Europe Marjane was able to embrace the punk lifestyle, but she lost her political awareness. Feeling guilty and disconnected from her family’s struggles, she returns home as a young adult only to find her country has become more repressive (especially to women) than ever before.
Although the setting in the 1970s and 1980s in an Islamic nation is unfamiliar to most modern American teens, Marjane Satrapi doesn’t spare readers from issues that interest adolescents. She gives a candid account of her experimentation with drugs, sex, and rock and roll. Adolescent readers will appreciate the honesty and the resulting relatability of her story. Young women, in particular, will find Marjane’s development from girl to woman easily identifiable. However, the author presents herself as an average person. The reason that Persepolis fits so well in this list is because Satrapi illustrates the methods of public and private protest that an average person can realistically carry out under an oppressive regime.
When Satrapi hides her walkman under her veil to listen to Michael Jackson, students will easily make comparisons to their own “oppressive regime”: school administration. Students could storyboard an experience that made them feel constrained by the rules of their society. They could find news on local protests and write article reviews determining several things: What was the goal of the protest; what was the method used to protest; how effective was the protest? Then, making connections further from themselves, they could draw on current events and draw (literally) a comparison between the 1979 Iranian Revolution and the current wave of revolutions in Africa and the Middle East. They could find the Twitter accounts, Facebook groups, and blogs of protestors living in these nations and determine how the restrictions of their lives compare with Marjane Satrapi’s adolescence in Iran. Persepolis gives adolescents an intimate look at the life of a young woman’s struggles to be herself in a dictatorship, an unfamiliar situation. Satrapi’s honesty makes her so easy to identify with that her life story serves as a window into a world that will let students make connections to people in similar situations around the world today.
It's also a film. Here's the trailer:
Youth Journalism International
Youth Journalism International [Home page]. Retrieved from http://youthjournalism.org. (2011. April 25).
Youth Journalism International is a web-based public educational charity run from the United States. Membership is entirely voluntary and no recruitment efforts are made. Adolescents usually find YJI through a Google search and send in an application. They write news items for YJI and in return, they receive free journalism training and a forum to voice the stories that they think need to be heard.
According to their website, YJI “connects teen writers, artists and photographers with their peers around the globe, teaches journalism, fosters cross-cultural understanding and promotes and defends a free youth press.” This news source might appeal to students more than CNN or The New York Times because it is news researched and written by their peers. The articles are written from a young person’s point-of-view, for a youth audience, and at an understandable reading level.
One of the stories on the front page of YJI as of April 2011 is an article on the Dalai Lama, written by nineteen-year-old Pushkal Shivam of Mumbai, who was granted an interview with the Tibetan leader. Several other stories focus on the Egyptian and Libyan revolutions. Most of these were written by Egyptian high schooler Jessica Elsayed, as was an article about how having a 
voice on these issues saved her life. These young journalists are living examples of the ways that adolescents can connect across international borders to teach each other about their worlds. They show teens taking the initiative to seek out the stories that they think need to be told. Students can read Elsayed’s article on they ways that youth journalism saved her live and discuss the ways that they too have felt like their opinions were overlooked. Students can apply to YJI or write editorials to the local paper. They can contact the authors, or even become Facebook friends with them. They can choose a local issue and try to line up real interviews with the parties involved. Youth Journalism International lays out the blueprints for students to become active members of the fourth branch of government: the media.
Invisible Children
Invisible Children [Multimedia website]. Retrieved from http://www2.invisiblechildren.com. (2011, April 25).
Invisible Children is a multi-modal project that started when three high school friends decided to travel to Africa after graduation to film a documentary about the genocide in Darfur. When war forced them south, they found their cameras trained instead on the longest-running civil war in Africa, a battle between the Lord’s Resistance Army and the government of Uganda. One of the LRA’s methods of fighting involves raiding Ugandan villages and kidnapping children to train as child soldiers. The three Americans created a documentary recording the nightly pilgrimage of Ugandan children into cities to be safe from LRA raids. The film was released in 2004, and since then Invisible Children has become a non-profit organization that has inspired grassroots movements around the nation to bring an end to the LRA’s terror. The movements involve a website (http://www2.invisiblechildren.com/) that includes music, a blog, videos, and much more.
The documentary begins with a heavy focus on the filmmakers, who are recent high school graduates. They seem like average eighteen-year-old boys. We see their mothers nervously wishing them a good trip, and we see them struggling to digest horrors they could never have imagined due to their own safe suburban upbringings. They’re perspective gives students a comfortable way in to the unfamiliar story that unfolds in Uganda. The social networking media that the teens went on to use to spread their message and mobilize their peers will appeal to students as well.
When students see that these three boys managed to mobilize members of Congress and the United Nations with their documentary, they will see that young people can affect foreign policy in major ways. Invisible Children gives teens many ways to participate through their website,. Students can organize “official” viewing parties at their schools, “sleep-ins” on their campuses to publicize the children’s night pilgrimages, and write letters to their local and national representatives. During my first year as a government teacher, my students were the ones who brought this movement to my attention, and it was one student in particular who became an organizer of a local “sleep-in.” He organized a viewing party at our school and our class attended the “sleep-in” in front of the Post-Standard in Clinton Square. I can say firsthand that the excitement of my class was palpable. Students followed news coverage of the event, and those that got responses to their letters to Congress brought them in to class to share voluntarily. The mission of Invisible Children, according to their website, is to use “film, creativity, and social action to end the use of child soldiers” in Uganda. By viewing their example and taking an active role in that mission, students can translate the same action model to work for any cause they choose.
References
Bean, T. & Moni, K. (2003). Developing students’ critical literacy: Exploring identity construction in young adult fiction. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 46(8), 638-648.
Bruchac, J. (2005). Code Talker: A novel about the Navajo marines of World War Two. New York: The Penguin Group.
Collins, S. (2008). The Hunger Games. New York: Scholastic Inc.
Doctorow, C. (2008). Little Brother. New York: Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.
Invisible Children [Multimedia website]. Retrieved from http://www2.invisiblechildren.com/homepage. (2011, April 25).
Magoon, K. (2009). The Rock and the River. New York: Aladdin.
Satrapi, M. (2007). The Complete Persepolis. New York: Pantheon.
Youth Journalism International [Home page]. Retrieved from http://youthjournalism.org. (2011. April 25).
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