“This author doesn’t even speak correct English”
That’s pretty racist of you, to expect correct English in a book for English class.
I mean sheesh already, you really set the bar too high!
You must be one of them wingers.
My next-door neighbor, who is half-Mexican and half-white, was good friends with my kids while they were growing up but when she was in about 6th grade she came over and talked with me and explained that once a kid reaches her age they’re not supposed to hang around with whites. They’re supposed to become “brown”, which means they do the stuff they are hard-wired to like: drugs and booze, sex, and fiery emotion which includes violence. I told her I didn’t think that was true, that there are Hispanics who don’t do any of those things. She said if you don’t do those things you are considered a traitor to the Latino “family”.
This girl was really struggling to figure out her identity. And that’s the message she had gotten from all around her. She knew it was a racist view of life - she said that Hispanics are proud racists and will laugh at anybody who thinks that’s bad - and she didn’t agree with it, but she thought she had to live by it.
Then my kids got into high school Spanish class, where we had to sign a waiver for them to watch R-rated movies/videos because they were supposed to try to interpret Spanish speaking in real-time from the videos, and the only Spanish-language videos the teacher could find had lots of sex, drugs, and violence.
Where do you suppose my neighbor got her confused ideas of what it means to be Hispanic? The school worked really hard to push into public eye the Hispanic kids who did well in school and extra-curriculars, with scholarships like crazy. My daughter looked at a book of scholarships to apply for and since she’s neither Black nor Hispanic there wasn’t anything for her to apply for. And I understand that and I’m happy that those kids are on a path to success.
But what the kids are taking away from it all is that you’re either a brain, or you’re a girl and pregnant at 12 (my daughter’s class had 2 Hispanic girls pregnant in 7th grade - one who deliberately got pregnant by her brother because she wanted a baby to love her - and another 3? were pregnant before their freshman year; the school was thinking about putting in a nursery between the middle school and high school because so many middle and high-schoolers had babies already. 30% of her class dropped out by sophomore year - a higher rate than even in north Omaha) or a guy in a gang.
My son’s best friend is Hispanic, comes to our house every day. When he was in 8th and 9th grades he was hanging by a thread, not sure which direction he wanted to go - to actually try at school, or to join a gang. I’m glad and proud that he chose to keep trying at school. He hopes to go to college and wants his grades to allow that. There are some really, really neat Hispanic families, and the pull of the stereotype is tugging at their kids.
Some of these kids need help figuring out their identity. I don’t think English class is necessarily the best place for that, or that reading trashy, poorly-written novels that fit the stereotype is going to be helpful to their identity struggle or to their English skills. I would love to see the behavioral objectives behind the suggested reading of this book. The student will be able to (TSWBAT).....?