Hello!

This is a link to our presentation on The Marrow Thieves. Feel free to peruse the slides and check out the resources.

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1WMhNxZHRiXRs0OhC8t9IJHorkta95pKNIQeIYUgBr5g/edit?usp=sharing

Really great article on Hip Hop in the classroom, authenticity, and the hierarchy of the canon.

It’s here! 

LLED 449 Text Presentation Lauren Mah

Unwind (novel)

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Unwind

Original hardcover edition
Author	Neal Shusterman
Cover artist	Daniel Roode
Country	United States
Language	English and
Genre	Science fiction, biopunk, adventure, dystopia, dystopian fiction
Publisher	Simon & Schuster
Publication date	2007
Media type	Hardback, paperback
Pages	335

Unwind is a 2007 science fiction novel by young adult literature author Neal Shusterman. It takes place in the United States, after a civil war somewhere in the near future. After a civil war, known as the Second Civil War or the Heartland War, was fought over abortion, a compromise was reached, allowing parents to sign an order for their children between the ages of 13 and 18 to be unwound—taken to “harvest camps” and having their body parts harvested for later use. The reasoning was that since 99.44% of the body had to be used (the other 0.56% are vestigial organs), unwinds did not technically die because their individual body parts lived on. In addition to unwinding, parents who are unable to raise their children to age 13 for retroactive abortion have the option to “stork” their child by leaving it on another family’s porch. If they don’t get caught, the “storked” baby then becomes the other family’s responsibility.

Unwind received positive reviews upon release, with praise focusing on the novel’s immersive environment and sociological implications. It also received many awards from young adult literature authorities^{[citation needed]}. A film adaptation of Unwind is currently in production by independent producers.^[1] A second novel titled UnWholly was released in August 2012,^[2] and a third in December 2013, titled UnSouled and a fourth in October 2014, titled UnDivided. A novella, UnStrung, was also published. UnBound is the newest edition to the Unwind Dystology. It’s written by Neal Shusterman (Creator), Michelle Knowlden, Jarrod Shusterman, Terry Black, and Brendan Shusterman. It was published December 15, 2015 by Simon & Schuster. This collection of novellas gives the readers more insight into the secrets and lost stories of the Unwind world.

This is in response to the text presentation on The Invisible Boy we had today with themes of inclusivity and, well, invisibility. There’s a sweet new podcast that would pair well from This American Life called Rosie’s Paradox where a 9-year-old girl wants to talk to her father, so she keeps asking him questions while he’s working at home. He gets annoyed, so asks her to “just write a list, and I’ll answer them.” So she creates this three page list of life’s biggest questions, starting with “What is life? Why? Time, why? Explain…” The father spends three years answering these questions philosophically (he’s a professor) but the girl says she just wanted him to talk to her. It’s a great little 10-minute story.

I think using movies,films or youtube clips in a class is an excellent teaching tool. I have used films a lot when teaching a novel study to ELL’s. Sometimes the movie helps them to understand the book better. There are many students  (both ELL and  native speakers)who struggle with understanding what ever the  novel, poem, short story was about. Using a movie, you tube clip or documentary can help cement or even broaden their understanding of what was taught. It brings a visual picture  to what was words and for some students that makes a huge difference in their understanding.

Hello! Here’s another one!

The Florida Project explores the life of motel families through this gorgeous piece of story-telling. The film mostly follows children protagonists, and situates itself in a sort of suspension between the harsh socioeconomic realities and imaginative whimsy of the young characters.

**SPOILERS**

It might prove challenging to teach certain aspects of the film. Specifically, an adult character provides for her child through sex work – it is never shown on screen, but is implied. Otherwise, this film could be used to explore how marginalized childhoods are represented in film, the stigmatization of sex-work (challenging content though), and socioeconomic disparity through the critique of big powerhouses like Disneyworld and the exploitation of its workers. Bonus: it’s also just aesthetically beautiful!

I know I’ve shared this in a previous LLED class, but I absolutely adore Sean Karemaker’s work, and thought I might as well give this another plug.

I’m most familiar with his graphic novels – he works through a wide variety of media – and believe that they would fit wonderfully in the classroom. Karemaker really plays around with form in his books, which (I think) really speaks to the temporalities of his archived personal narratives.

Check it out!

http://www.seankaremaker.com/comics/

Hey all,

Here are the slides we used during our presentation today. The online application for word art (useful for concrete poetry as well!) can be found here.

Paired texts you could possibly use:

1. “Simple Recipes” by Madeleine Thien (deals with family and intergenerational conflict)
2. Game of Thrones (select scenes)
3. Monkey Beach by Eden Robinson (Indigenous text on identity and growing up – probably meant for grade 12/seniors)
4. To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before by Jenny Han (YA coming-of-age from the POV of a Korean-American girl, very accessible)
5. Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng (a story about a mixed Chinese-American family; cw for themes of suicide and trauma – lots of things to unpack, probably meant for grade 12)

I highly recommend Barefoot Gen to be a companion piece with the BBC documentary Hiroshima; also with any Socials unit about the WW2 Pacific War and any relevant docs about it. I teach it every three years or so across my ELL English 2 or 3 and ELL Socials 2 or 3 classes with English and Socials activities divided accordingly.

Note that many students from East Asia still carry the very strong prejudices which continue to exist between Japan, Korea, China, Taiwan, Vietnam, and Myanmar since world war 2. So I start off with studying the rise and conquest of the Japanese Empire and then proceed to the Pacific War and finally Nagasaki Hiroshima.  Understandably, this journey raises a lot of emotions which uhave to be gauged and challenged throughout. Usually, by the end of all this, most of the students come to realize that war is Hell and something that is to be avoided at all costs. East Asian students start to understand the full tragedy of how World War 2’s legacy still continues to influence the region today. Even as Trump challenges North Korea.

The triggers are of course, it is two months study of war and human atrocity. It’s heavy, heavy stuff. The true stories of the BBC series almost exactly parallel those in Barefoot Gen. Also be aware that the anime version of the bombing of Hiroshima is quite disturbing – more so than in the live action series and documentary. It can be found on YouTube.

Another interesting thing about this study is that afterwards almost nobody views movies and videos about weapons and war tech in quite the same “that’s so cool” way again.

I only teach the 1st and 1st half of the second manga (where Shinji’s doppelgänger arrives. Students often seek out the rest on their own.

Barefoot Gen

Japanese manga series