Big Read Project ends with student, elder insights

Encouraging reading among Americans is the impetus behind the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) “Big Read” project.
    Locally, Xavier University of Louisiana, in partnership with the New Orleans Public Library, was awarded a “Big Read” grant from the NEA this year to take part in the project to encourage reading everywhere – in schools, libraries and bookstores.
    Each of the not-for-profit grant recipients received 1,000 copies of one of 34 books, digital recorders and was free to adapt activities to the needs of its community.
    Xavier University centered its efforts on “A Lesson Before Dying,” a book based in Louisiana by Louisiana-born author Ernest Gaines.
    “How meaningful for students in Louisiana to participate in the reading of this book,” said Olger Twyner III, associate vice president of sponsored programs/Title III with the Office of Resource Development at Xavier University. He said the book was chosen due to its Louisiana theme.
    The month-long project in New Orleans opened with a Feb. 23 launch at the New Orleans East Library branch and a keynote event at Xavier University with author Ernest Gaines.
    It has continued with book discussion groups involving “A Lesson Before Dying” at library branches, local bookstores, the YMCA Learning Center, Covenant House and at Xavier University.
  
 Local high school students also conducted oral history projects with elders who had lived during the time of Jim Crow laws and racial segregation. Two film screenings of the 1999 adaptation of “A Lesson Before Dying” also were held at Zeitgeist Multidisciplinary Arts Center in New Orleans.
Oral histories
    Xavier University Preparatory School students visited Feb. 26 with seniors at the Gert Town Community Center in New Orleans to get a first-hand account of their experiences of institutional injustice and racial inequality as portrayed in Gaines’ book. Sophie B. Wright students also conducted oral history interviews.
    Xavier Prep students in English III honors taught by Margie Gillard explored with the African-American seniors what life was like during that time in history. They asked things like how hard it was to find a job, what kind of job they were able to get, if they ever worked for a Caucasian person, if they attend school with white children and did family members move from the South. They recorded the answers and transcribed the interviews.
    Gillard said her students were well-prepared for the oral histories, having read “A Lesson Before Dying” in class, discussed the book and the Jim Crow laws at the time the book was set and famous African Americans during that time. It also “makes the lesson of the book come alive for them.”
    “So many things that they talk about that pertains to African Americans is not in the textbooks,” Gillard said. “I wanted them to see what is reality and learn some of the terms that were in the book” (such as grinding, sharecropping, parran).
    The students gained insight to how different times were for older generations of African  Americans.
    “I was surprised that they never went to school with white people,” 11th grader Dominique Caston said.
    Students also mentioned how Gaines’ book reinforced what they had learned in class about the gains made by Civil Rights Movement. But some of the language – especially the derogatory names that were used to describe African Americans –  shocked them.
    “It made me see how much our people struggled to get where we are right now,” 10th grader Janay Major said. “It shows the things we take for granted in everyday life, like going to any bathroom we want. They couldn’t do that (in the 1940s). It made me see what my grandmother would tell me when we would ride on a bus: ‘If we fought to get to the front, why would you run to sit in the back?’”
    Xavier Prep assistant principal for curriculum and teacher development Latricia Baham said the Big Read isn’t the only collaboration between Xavier Prep and Xavier University of Louisiana. Xavier University physics students help students in science and math departments at Xavier Prep. Xavier University also provides student teachers at Xavier Prep. Students also participate in Xavier University’s concurrent admissions programs to earn college credits.
How Big Read started
    The National Endowment for the Arts created the Big Read in 2006 in response to its 2004 study “Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America.” The study “showed that literary reading was declining among all age groups, with the steepest decline in the youngest age groups.”
    For Xavier University, the Big Read is part of its five-year initiative “Read Today, Lead Tomorrow” that enables its college students to become more “engaged readers who will enhance the reading culture on campus and in the community.”
    The Big Read closing ceremony on March 23 at the library’s main branch recognized students who wrote social justice essays or did other created works based on the novel.
    For details on the project, visit www.neabigread.org.
    Christine Bordelon can be reached at cbordelon@clarion    herald.org.