Radical Lessons in the Wake of Black Lives Matter
PDF

Supplementary Files

GRAPHIC ESSAY--Radical Lessons--sample pages
Master document--layout & description
page one
page one

Keywords

composition
comics
community college
rhetoric
social justice
white supremacy
literacy

How to Cite

Rodas, J. M. (2019). Radical Lessons in the Wake of Black Lives Matter. Radical Teacher, 115, 48–63. https://doi.org/10.5195/rt.2019.674

Abstract

This graphic essay focuses on the use of graphic composition strategies and includes work by contributing authors from my community college composition classroom. The main point of this piece is that *everyone deserves access to important ideas and information and that using comics to teach and to learn disciplines us to pare away the nonessential and prioritize foundational content. Pictures and emphatic word-art help clarify complex concepts for many who might otherwise struggle to master challenging written text. For these people, comics can provide a point of entry to discourse to which they might otherwise have had only marginal access. The exercise discussed in this graphic essay disentangles students from the pressures of performing conventional standards of (white) literacy while providing an avenue into antiracist reasoning and the discourse of public intellectuals of color.

https://doi.org/10.5195/rt.2019.674
PDF

References

th. Directed by Ava DuVernay, Netflix, 2016.

Alexander, Michelle. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. The New Press, 2012.

Beah, Ishmael. A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier. Sarah Crichton Books, 2007.

Coates, Ta-Nehisi. “The Case for Reparations.” The Atlantic, June 2014. www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-case-for-reparations/361631/. Accessed 28 Mar 2019.

DiAngelo, Robin. “White Fragility.” International Journal of Critical Pedagogy, Vol. 3, No. 3, pp. 54-70.

Kraver, Jeraldine. “Reinventing the Composition Classroom, or How Making Comics Can Clarify the Composing Process.” SANE journal: Sequential Art Narrative in Education, Vol. 1, Iss. 3, 1 Jan 2013, pp. 30-46, digitalcommons.unl.edu/sane/vol1/iss3/4?utm_source=digitalcommons.unl.edu%2Fsane%2Fvol1%2Fiss3%2F4&utm_medium=PDF&utm_campaign=PDFCoverPages. Accessed 28 Mar 2019.

Scheg, Abigail G. “Give It a Taste: Serving Creative Writing in Small Doses.” Creative Composition: Inspiration and Techniques for Writing Instruction, edited by Danita Berg and Lori A. May, Multilingual Matters, 2015, pp. 24-29.