Fiction & History XVII

Contributed by Sheila Onuska, Associate Director International Education Consortium/Cooperating School Districts

On a rainy afternoon in December, readers assemble to discuss a challenging novel with themes of religion and redemption in the post-World War II world. They have come together to talk about Wise Blood by Flannery O’Connor, the second of four novels chosen for the Fiction & History XVII book group. The readers are a group of teachers at every point in their careers from entry level through retired who are joined by new members as the years go by. They dig into the book with enthusiasm. Fiction & History is in session.

The Missouri Humanities Council has generously funded Fiction & History for the last three years. The Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education and private foundations provided support for earlier years. Sessions are held four times a year in the late afternoon after school. Teachers pay a small fee for which they receive the books and a snack plus back-up material such as literary reviews. Attendance ranges from fifteen to twenty- five. The programs are held at the Cooperating School Districts’ headquarters and are part of the International Education Consortium’s public programming.

Teachers’ comments crystallize the goals of the program as “sharing about books I might not have read” and “continuing education for me.” One participant wrote: “Reading alone with only my own lens is almost two-dimensional compared to the understanding we can come to as a group. When I teach my high school students I remember this and make it quite clear to every student that their unique viewpoint must be voiced.”

O’Connor’s 1952 novel is typical of the books chosen for the long-running program because it gives readers both literary value and insights into a world they might not know. Wise Blood is the story of Hazel Motes, a rootless returned World War II veteran who takes to the streets to preach his own brand of Christianity to a largely uncaring cast of characters who are engaged in their own struggle to find redemption and their place in the world. The novel unfolds as a mixture of allegory and farce and provides numerous instances where the author pushes readers into new insights.

 Fiction & History had its beginnings over twenty years ago when the staff of the International Education Consortium recognized two needs. Research was showing that teachers who read, just like teachers who write, are more successful in encouraging the reading and writing of their students. At the same time, school curricula were expanding to include international and multicultural ideas and resources and teachers were acknowledging that they did not have the appropriate background to teach the new material effectively. So IEC began holding sessions dedicated to reading and discussing international and multicultural texts useful in teaching the broader history and literature a global and multicultural perspective required for today’s world.

It quickly became evident that, rather than having a speaker who lectured to a passive audience; the most effective mechanism for introducing new authors and new texts to teachers was a wide-ranging discussion among a committed group of readers. The program took off from there and has continued to attract a devoted group of teachers. The group has been officially known as Fiction& History since at least 1994.

The group has dissected books about Asia, Africa, women, and the American Civil War, to name just a few topics. In 2000-2001, for example, the group examined U. S. life in the last half century through the lens of male authors: Sloan Wilson’s The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, Richard Yates’s The Easter Parade, John Updike’s Rabbit Run, and Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections bringing the discussion into the twenty-first century.

Beginning this October, the group’s choices are by female authors who cover a parallel time period from their own wide-ranging perspectives. Ann Petry’s 1946 novel The Street chronicles the life of a young black mother in Harlem. Following Wise Blood, the group will read the Eudora Welty’s The Optimist’s Daughter, a winner of the Pulitzer Prize that looks into changing family dynamics. The final choice is The Plague of Doves by Louise Erdrich published in 2009 and a Pulitzer finalist from an author known for chronicling the jostling of Native American and European cultures.

While the four texts chosen each year are not necessarily books for classroom use, many of them have found their way into classrooms. The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit is currently being considered for adoption in a high school English course.

Sue Heggarty, a retired English department chair and longtime literature specialist, facilitates the sessions and Sheila Onuska, IEC associate director, manages the program. For more information, email sonuska@csd.org.  For current course detail, http://www.csd.org/IEC/fiction_history.html

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