Nutrient Dense Literature
One English Teacher’s Journey to Inspire
Life-Long Reading
by: Robyn Corelitz (@robyncorelitz)
It’s mid-March, and I teach seniors. It’s that slow, slate-gray time of the year where motivation melts, when even the most dedicated of students begin to lag a bit, Sparknoting instead of close reading, skipping over entire chapters in favor of binge-watching Netflix. To counteract, I try to invigorate the class; to compete with March Madness I ban all cell phones during bathroom trips, try social justice movement exercises to a Miles Davis soundtrack, and up the digital learning ante with new episodes of This American Life. Even so, the students remain grumpy, glazed-over, just kind of — done.
In some ways, I don’t blame them; they have worked so hard, they’ve played the game of school extraordinarily well. They make college plans with armfuls of heart and hope; when discussing life post-high school, they break into sunlight, bursting with dreams of extra-long twin sheets and Big 10 tailgating and how to fill out the perfect roommate questionnaire. Yet. When we gather to discuss the end of Heart of Darkness, they sigh deeply. They don’t want to do the hard work of our AP Literature and Comp class; their critical reading journals remain blank, pens capped, book spines barely cracked. Their eyes turn down to unannotated pages as they shuffle their Uggs, staring out the window at the greening courtyard.
But it’s not art to me…
“Heart of Darkness is so…unnecessarily long. Difficult. Must we read this?” Heads nod in agreement. We discuss their lingering annoyance with this text; its complexity and contradictions. As a class, we try to name the reasons they cannot seem to find value in the novella. They slide over the surface: the sentences stretch on for miles, it’s irrelevant, it’s just so old. They bring in Eliot (we paired Heart with The Waste Land), and continue venting: “It’s so disconnected.” “Eliot is a huge snob.” And perhaps most essential to our entire text study all year: “If art and literature is whatever you make it; why must we read such difficult pieces?”
“OK,” I say. “Let’s talk about nutrient dense literature. What should our reading diets include?” Students love to talk about this; their initial reaction is casually defensive, as if there is absolutely no debate. With glittering ease, they find ways to justify taking every classic text out of our curriculum. Romeo and Juliet? Easily replaced with Twilight. Poetry? Change to Katy Perry lyrics. Their arguments are thought-provoking: they unfailingly insist that art is whatever you make it, that any random arrangement of letters is poetry, that 50 Shades should be a text they can write about on the AP Lit Open Question. Yet these works are like Doritos. Initially incredibly gratifying, they give us a fast-fix, a spike in insulin, endorphins, rushes of short-lived pleasure. Add to that the addictive nature of these literary fast foods, and you have a perfect storm of Shakespeare-denial, classic-bashing, abbreviations and emojis instead of complex sentences that crescendo into paragraph and page. Yes, it’s hard to read Heart of Darkness when you’re used to a diet of Meghan Trainor lyrics and Buzzfeed. It’s even harder to read Beloved when you’re convinced classic texts must be mind-numbingly challenging, inaccessible, even off-putting. However, when we don’t include those super dense texts in our classrooms, those pieces of literary marrow, when we break from challenge in favor of ease, we are left starved for nutrients, for pieces of writing that ask us to stretch our minds and open our hearts. We are hungrier than ever, yet all we seem to want to do is reach for another bag of Nicholas Sparks.
You=Curator
“Some of you will never take a literature class in college,” I say. A couple kids nod and smile broadly. Others look a little freaked. “So think about this. You will get to choose every piece of writing you read from now on. No one will ever force you to read a text of “literary merit.”
There is a pause. I’m not sure this really occurred to most of them; the notion that they will be the curators of their own reading material in just a few months. That no one will ever force them to read Shakespeare or Ellison or any poem — ever.
“You’ll get to read whatever you want.
You can fill your cart with Literary Doritos (50 Shades or bumpy-cover mysteries or whatever ghostwritten autobiography is on sale at Target), or you can stock up on Literary Organics (Saunders, Adichie, Powers, Tartt, Doerr, Atwood, Diaz). Chances are, life and jobs and kids and technology will make it really hard for you to sit down and choose to read Toni Morrison when you could read Gone Girl. You’re going to be tired and you’re going to want to reach for the Doritos. And that’s OK. That’s part of adult life, part of life post-high-school. So make this count — in case you live on a diet of Literary Doritos from now on, I want to make sure you have a couple more grass-fed, pastured, sustainably-raised texts.”
I’m not entirely sure this conversation invigorates them to the point where they’ll be rapt with attention until June, but a tiny chord of recognition lingers. When we begin our discussion of Beloved a couple of weeks later, there is a slight uptick in energy; it’s as if the class has been tuned up just a sliver of a pitch. Is Morrison’s novel the green smoothie, the grass fed liver, the seasonal salad we needed to get back on track?
What does this mean for us?
So often, we are asked to justify our curriculum; to defend our dense texts as if they are sad little Sydney Cartons on trial before a judge of classic-bashing-counter-culturists. When we admit we love Shakespeare or Morrison, we admit the ultimate nerdiness; somehow, loving challenging texts has become uncool, unhip, illogical. Of course, I wonder about the value of keeping certain canonical texts; I push myself to take risks and include new poetry, new fiction, even Youtube-based poets into my classes. However, even though students respond immediately and with gusto to any new form of writing or video, I can’t help but wonder if this is a simple sugar rush just waiting to crash. I think a lot of students (and teachers) are afraid to discuss this for fear of seeming close-minded, or stuck in a curriculum that’s old-school, unresponsive. It goes without saying that our students should have choice, time for SSR, lit circles and independent reading and writing. It’s obvious that the titles we offer should be inclusive, representative, and even — gasp — fun! Our amazing, shifting canon should always be meshing and molding itself to reflect what’s going on in society. But, when we begin to re-position the canon as as place of total and complete ease, that’s when I get uncomfortable. It’s critical that we share challenging texts with our kids; texts that stretch the brain, allow us to think deeply, and ask a lot of us as readers and thinkers. Our students will have the rest of their lives to curate their bookshelves (or lack of!); while they’re in high school, it’s our responsibility to help craft some seriously nutritious literary meals with and for them — meals that nourish them beyond a few scattered moments on Snapchat, a few poorly-crafted lyrics, the latest viral listicle.
It’s also our responsibility to have really open and honest conversations about how nutrient-dense literature should be both completely heart and mind-opening and beautifully well-executed. How 50 Shades of Gray (Grey? Who cares?) is, well — just not a work of art worthy of classroom discussion or the Open Question. How it’s wonderful to love and see the value in easy, breezy, candy-sweet storytelling. How we cling to delicious childhood memories of devouring books by the series — my own shelves were stuffed with The Babysitters Club and Sweet Valley High — but can also aim to include a few pieces of nutrient dense literature in our lives — at least every once in a while. Twilight will never be Johnny Got His Gun or The Tempest or The Master and Margarita or The Goldfinch. The latest string of emjoi-stories will never be Sethe’s rememories, Thomasina’s brilliant equations, or Daisy Buchanan’s sad, bright eyes. Perhaps we’ll have both Doritos and Kale Chips in our kitchens, but when we think of the texts that truly make us think, make us wonder and question and put our very existence into question, we will likely reach past the James Patterson and go straight for a shot of Dostoevsky.
