The Image Becomes the Weapon - National Council of Teachers of

David
E. Low
andImage
Gerald
Campano
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Campano
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Becomes
the Weapon
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The Image Becomes the Weapon:
New Literacies and Canonical
Legacies
S
ince the 1960s, discussions pertaining to the literary canon have been
sites of increasing academic and
public discord. As questions have developed around which texts should be required reading in schools, the curriculum
has become a progressively more contested domain, fostering debates about the
social and cultural functions of literature.
Such disputation is evidenced by the “culture wars” waged over the past generation
and their aftermath (Ravitch, 2002). As
we see it, all iterations of a literary canon,
whether “Eurocentric” or “multicultural,” concern authority, cultural capital,
and the privileging of one set of texts at
the expense of others (Guillory, 1993).
While ongoing academic interrogations of
the canon are valuable and perhaps inevitable, as literacy educators, we prioritize
recognizing and learning from the literate
legacies of our students over the impetus
to divide the world of texts into ideological camps.
Literacy scholars have looked beyond the literal embodiment of the book to consider multiple
genres, modes, media, and a wide range of lived
contexts within which people construct and express meaning (New London Group, 1996). The
hegemony of alphabetic texts has thus given way
to multiple literacies, such as comics and graphic
novels, digital storytelling, hip hop, video games,
and youth media culture (e.g., Carter, 2008; Hall,
2011; Low, 2012; Simon, 2012). “Literacy pedagogy,” argued the New London Group, “now
must account for the burgeoning variety of text
forms” (1996, p. 61). Scholars and educators alike
suggest that new literacies provide culturally relevant avenues for historically minoritized youth
to navigate schooling, deconstruct dominant
narratives, and assert their social and experiential
knowledge (Morrell, 2002; Vasudevan & Campano, 2009).
We believe distinctions between the canon
and popular culture should not be cast too starkly. In an ideal learning environment, students
will encounter and create a range of texts and
come to see themselves as operating within rich
and evolving intellectual traditions. The question thus needs to move away from whether there
should or should not be a literary canon and toward how literary legacies are manifested in our
students’ lives and writings. We contend that
texts not conventionally considered academic
(such as comics) and texts often read in schools
(such as canonical novels) have porous boundaries and often share similar literary roots. Based
on our research, we examine how African American naturalism finds its way into contemporary
texts as well as into the multimodal writings produced by youth. By highlighting an excerpt from
the graphic narrative Yummy and the work of a
fifth-grade student in a school comics club, we
show how visuo-textual narratives may reasonably be seen as extensions of preexisting literary
traditions.
Copyright © 2013 by the National Council of Teachers of English. All rights reserved.
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The Naturalistic Tradition
Words can be used “as a weapon,” wrote Richard
Wright in Black Boy (1945, p. 248), a book often acknowledged as canonical. Indeed, Wright
found ample opportunity to deploy words as
weapons of social critique, making salient the realities of inequality and racism not often visible
to a dominant white majority. From the Southern lynchings he documented in his earliest fiction to his later depictions of ghettos in Chicago,
Wright remained determined to expose the dehumanizing living conditions he encountered
(Moskowitz, 2008). Reading Wright, wrote Irving Howe, “made impossible a repetition of the
old lies . . . [and] brought out into the open . . .
the hatred, fear, and violence” (1963, p. 354).
An extension of realism’s “faithful reproduction” of reality, naturalism refers to the “franker, harsher treatment of that reality” (Gates &
McKay, 2003, p. 1356), emphasizing how one’s
environment and broader social and political
dynamics can shape success and even one’s very
nature (Cormier-Hamilton, 1994). In the African
American literary tradition, naturalism is concerned with, among other things, poverty, violence, racism, criminalization, and social protest.
This is epitomized in Wright’s work, as what
he encountered in Chicago bore little resemblance to the North of his childhood imagination.
Instead, Wright found the “urban equivalent of
the slave ship’s ‘festering hold’” (Baker, 2010, p.
110). Baker’s invocation of the Middle Passage,
in reference to Wright’s portrayal of Chicago,
historically connects antebellum slavery and the
modern Black condition, including the surveillance and mass incarceration of people of color.
Forms of oppressive control are thus “reborn
in new form” (Alexander, 2010, p. 21). Wright
portrayed the state as embodied in a police force
that, in its interactions with the African American
community, often tramples constitutional rights
(Clapp, 2011). In depicting an unjust justice system, Wright used his words as weapons to make
visible slavery’s and Jim Crow’s institutional successors.
Yummy: A Contemporary
Manifestation of the Naturalistic
Tradition
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The legacy of African American naturalism cannot be neatly slotted into any one literary epoch,
and it is manifested in many genres, including
film, street literature
(Morris, 2012), and the The synergy between words
graphic novel Yumand images highlights the
my: The Last Days of a
Southside Shorty (Neri porous boundaries between
& DuBurke, 2010).
mediums traditionally considNeri and DuBurke use
public records to visu- ered within and outside the
ally document the stoliterary canon.
ry of Robert “Yummy”
Sandifer, who in 1994,
at the age of 11, drew national attention for the
killing of 14-year-old Shavon Dean in a Southside neighborhood of Chicago. Through the
perspective of a fictitious teenage narrator, Neri
and DuBurke invite readers to navigate complex
issues related to family, racial inequality, gang
violence, media, and politics.
As in Wright’s oeuvre, the police in Yummy
function as an occupying force, rather than as
community protectors, and a naturalistic emphasis on criminalization becomes visually prominent (see Fig. 1). Six police officers tower over
three submissively posed neighborhood residents, while looks of suspicion greet the former
from the periphery. As Wacquant (2002) writes,
“the remnants of the dark ghetto and an expanding carceral system have become linked in a single system that entraps large numbers of younger
black men . . . to make the ghetto more like a prison.” DuBurke’s illustrations—replete with fences, bars, bricks, and shadows—visually represent
Chicago’s Southside as demonstrably prisonlike;
his scenes expose dehumanizing neighborhood
conditions similar to Wright’s representation of
segregation in the same city over half a century
earlier. The visuo-textual medium of comics, as
employed in Yummy, augments the naturalistic
tropes invoked by Wright. The synergy between
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words and images highlights the porous boundaries between mediums traditionally considered
within and outside the literary canon.
Comics Club and the Legacy of
Naturalism
Over the past year, David has been working
closely with a group of fourth- to eighth-grade
African American boys as part of a comics club
(Bitz, 2006) within a larger research project initiated by Gerald in a multiethnic, multilingual
community in a large northeastern city. The
club meets weekly for three hours to read, write,
Figure 1.
draw, and discuss comics. As the club’s facilitator,
David provides students with a variety of comics genres (e.g., superhero, humor, adventure,
biography, nonfiction) as well as art supplies for
making their own comics. The instruction in the
club is based in critical inquiry (Cochran-Smith
& Lytle, 2009), creating opportunities for the
students to explore issues relevant to their lives
via the medium of comics.
Much like the comics the students read, those
they have created vary in subject matter and style.
However, two major genres appear consistently:
the superhero adventure and the naturalistic story of black urban life. Many of the comics feature
the day-to-day activities of Randy, a fictitious
protagonist several members of the club created
for storytelling purposes. In the early weeks of
the club, while members were deliberating about
what sorts of comics they wanted to make, several
had the idea that if they jointly designed a single
character, they could tell a better story.
In this collaborative spirit Randy was born,
and whoever used the character could interpret
Randy in his own way. Members of the club
wrote about Randy’s relationships, his nightmares, and his encounters in the neighborhood, among other subjects. Often, these could
be read thematically as forms of social critique.
The Randy character may offer a way for middle
level students in the club to safely “fictionalize
reality” (Medina & Campano, 2006) and to address challenging issues facing their families and
community. Similar to Yummy—which the club
members had not read—the students’ Randy stories employ the comics medium to convey and
augment the naturalistic tradition.
One example of a Randy story, as sketched
by 12-year-old Larry (pseudonym), portrays the
character being confronted and harassed by four
police officers, presented as a faceless monolithic
block (see Fig. 2). Randy’s flip retorts are construed by the officers as a criminal provocation,
leading to his being handcuffed. In the center
of the page, the word “cuff” is explicitly labeled
(Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006), becoming a visual
synecdoche for the relationship between African
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American youth and the criminal justice system.
Drawing on the historical ties between slavery
and imprisonment (Hedges & Sacco, 2012), Larry’s “cuff” recalls chains of bondage. Ultimately,
Randy is taken away to prison for his oppositional but typically teenager-like comments to the
officers.
As Larry explained to David about the genesis of his graphic narrative, “I was watching a
cop show . . . and this guy, he was just sitting on a
curb and smoking, and the cops just came up and
started, like they got racist with him. So that’s
what made me think of that.” Larry’s comics
satirize injustices in the criminal justice system—
specifically with respect to the racist profiling of
young black males—in a way that echoes both
Wright’s and Neri and DuBurke’s naturalist approaches. In his own way, Larry also portrays the
segregation of African American communities as
a mechanism for physical and social subordination (Wacquant, 2002). The police officers in
Larry’s comics are antagonists, embodying an
impersonal occupying force. Larry’s sketches
seem to convey how “mass incarceration defines
the meaning of blackness in America: black people, especially black men, are criminals” (Alexander, 2010, p. 192). Larry critiques this America,
as did Richard Wright, by exposing the injustices
and racial discrimination at the core of its institutions. In Larry’s hands, the synergy of image and
word becomes the weapon.
Larry offers one example of how a popular
medium can reinforce African American naturalism, enabling students to contribute to evolving
literary traditions and social legacies of dissent.
Although he has not yet read Richard Wright
or Yummy, Larry is working within this literary heritage; he has significant knowledge about
inequality borne from his experiences—a form
of epistemic privilege (Campano, 2007)—and
passed down to him through intergenerational
literacy practices (Gadsden, 1992) outside of
school. We believe it will be important for Larry
to make explicit links between his comics and the
more established canon, a pedagogical imperative
that is becoming increasingly difficult in a policy
climate emphasizing remediation and standardization at the expense of shared inquiry.
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Conclusion
Many literary and artistic genres that have a canonical aura were once considered popular, if not
lowbrow, forms of cultural expression, from the
drama of Shakespeare to the jazz music of Lincoln Center. While a multiliteracies framework
would suggest that students critically engage the
world through a range of texts and practices, it
is perhaps premature to disassemble the canon
altogether, especially when the contributions of
authors from minoritized communities are entering the school curriculum after longstanding social and political struggles for recognition, as well
as facing a backlash, as exemplified in the recent
assault on Ethnic Studies in Arizona. How, then,
do educators both expose students to the canon
while simultaneously honoring the intellectual
Figure 2. Larry’s graphic narrative adopts several central tenets
of the African American naturalist tradition.
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engagement young people are drawn to on their
own, often in out-of-school contexts (Gainer &
Lapp, 2010)?
What we have learned from Larry, as well as
so many other youth in our research, is the need
to view all students as cosmopolitan intellectuals
(Campano & Ghiso, 2011) who have the capacities to think transculturThe canon is not solely a ally and across genres,
mechanism to be repro- making any texts they
may encounter potenduced; it is also critically tial grist for their crereinvented by our students. ative mills. The canon is
not solely a mechanism
to be reproduced; it is
also critically reinvented by our students. Larry
employed comics, a marginalized medium, to
situate himself within a deeper literary legacy. In
the process, he began to make the canon his own,
while cultivating and expressing critical perspectives that were immediately relevant to his life.
By coupling new literacies and canonical texts
and encouraging multimodal composing, teachers can provide educational spaces where students understand themselves as both inheritors
and creators (Campano & Ghiso, 2011, p. 175)
of literary traditions.
Authors’ Acknowledgments
Special thanks to Greg Neri and Randy DuBurke for their permission to use text and images
from Yummy: The Last Days of a Southside Shorty
(2010) and to María Paula Ghiso—as well as the
journal’s editors and reviewers—for providing
thoughtful suggestions on earlier versions of this
manuscript. Thanks also to the youth and adults
who make comics club a wonderful site of art and
inquiry.
References
Alexander, M. (2010). The new Jim Crow: Mass incarceration in the age of colorblindness. New York, NY:
The New Press.
Baker, H. A., Jr. (2010). Race, displacement, and
Richard Wright’s transatlantic real estate.
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Bitz, M. (2006). The art of democracy/democracy as
art: Creative learning in afterschool comic book
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Campano, G. (2007). Immigrant students and literacy:
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Campano, G., & Ghiso, M. P. (2011). Immigrant students as cosmopolitan intellectuals. In S. Wolf, P.
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Tips for Teaching
• Honor the rich intellectual legacies of our increasingly diverse student populations, such as African American naturalism, magical realism from Latin America, El Teatro Campesino of the United Farm Workers, or spoken word poetry.
• Pair the classics with contemporary multimodal texts that adopt canonical themes. For example, Marjane Sartrapi’s
graphic novel Persepolis (2000) is a bildungsroman (a journey from innocence to experience) that has resonances with
the works of Mark Twain. A focus on multimodality can expose students to the canon while honoring the media with
which they regularly engage.
• Encourage students to produce their own multimodal remixes of canonical texts and themes, such as a digital story
that might sample a speech from Dr. King, to address contemporary social justice issues.
• Provide spaces for students to actively engage with, rather than merely passively receive, literary traditions. For example, drama techniques may be used to interpret canonical scenes.
• Support students in critically interrogating the very notion of the canon and who has the power to decide what
should be read.
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David E. Low is a PhD student at the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education
whose research examines how multimodal reading and composing—primarily via the medium of
comics—enable youths’ critical literacy practices. Gerald Campano is an associate professor and
chair of the Reading/Writing/Literacy department at the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate
School of Education whose research focuses on practitioner inquiry, critical literacy, identity, and
university–community partnerships.
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