"Drown"

18 April 2016: Monday saw the last day of new material in my ENGL 204 classes. Since the new edition of the Norton Anthology came out, the last piece in the entire book, Junot Diaz's short story "Drown," is the last piece I teach. I love that story, but sometimes wonder about ending the semester with it because it's a bit of a downer (as if the title doesn't give that away). I also do have a good enough sense (yet) of what to do with it in my teaching. Still, the students do a pretty good job with it. Not great, but pretty good. And I get that that's as much about me as it is about them.

But there was one terrific moment that especially thrilled me (in that quiet, can't-be-too-excited way). The story's narrator lives with his mother, who is described as a quiet--so quiet that her son describes her (jokingly, affectionately) as a ninja. She's also had a very hard life: she's poor, she's been abandoned by the man she loves, she's lonely. Anyway, in my later class, I asked why she is so quiet. And this one student--you know the kind, I think--the kind who always pays attention, always does well on tests and quizzes and papers, but never speaks up--well, she spoke up and explained why she thinks the mother is so silent. It was a small moment, but one of those moments that reminded me of how you never can predict what will happen in the classroom.