The title of The Watsons Go to Birmingham - 1963, by Christopher Paul Curtis, immediately signifies the topic of the novel to the reader: Race. Though most of the narrative is devoted to describing the familial ups and downs of the "Weird Watsons" - from the perspective of ten-year old Kenny - the subject of race is not one the reader, or the protagonists for that matter, can avoid confronting. In fact, the reader knows something the Watsons do not: that this family's road trip from Flint to Birmingham will take them to the epicenter of events that will alter their lives and the course of the Civil Rights movement.
For a majority of the novel, Kenny remains seemingly unaware of his race and the pervasive racial tensions in his country. As he says, recounting the conversation between his mother and grandmother, "They talked about how much trouble people were having with some white people down here, who got married to who...a bunch of boring junk like that" (p. 166). By juxtaposing racial issues with mundane family matters, both Kenny and the author, Christopher Paul Curtis, intentionally downplay the significance of race. And yet, race pervades the narrative and Kenny's life in subtle but powerful ways. Within the first few pages, Kenny's father makes a lighthearted joke about the "Coloreds Only" bathroom in downtown Birmingham (p. 5). In school, Kenny reads a poem by Langston Hughes, a Harlem Renaissance poet who was unashamedly black and was criticized by some intellectuals for his less than idyllic portrayals of black life. Kenny's siblings both deal with identity issues centered around race - his brother, Byron, tries out a "Mexican" hair style and his sister, Joetta, rejects Mrs. Davidson's gift of a white clay angel because it doesn't look like her. On the road trip, Kenny is afraid to urinate in the woods because of Byron's warning: "They got crackers and rednecks up here... If they caught your ass out here, they'd hang you now" (p. 146).
Despite the very real presence of race in the novel, it takes a true historic event - the Birmingham church bombing that killed four young girls - to change Kenny into someone who understands the injustices his people face in American society. When he looks at himself in the mirror at the end of the novel, he begins to cry because racial prejudice is no longer "boring junk" to him but reality. He asks his brother "why" people would want to kill innocent children and Byron does not have an answer for him except to "keep on steppin'" (p. 203). And while Kenny may "keep on steppin," it will now be with the burden of his race on his shoulders and the resolve shared by those who stood up for equality in the Civil Rights Movement.
Even though the church bombing takes up fewer than eight pages of the story, Curtis' message is clear: race is a fundamental part of a person's history, family life, and identity; it cannot be ignored. I think this is an important message for me as a teacher as well. In the past, I have chosen to deal with race by being colorblind and this has not always been the best approach. Once, after a lesson on the Atlantic slave trade, one of my African American students came to me upset at the use of the word "Negro" in a primary source and, defensively, I brushed it off as "history." I wish I could go back and change that conversation to one about her own struggles with racial identity in an almost all-white private school. Decades after the Civil Rights Movement, race still has transformative power in the lives of young adolescents and it is a topic that needs to be discussed in the classroom, with or without a book like The Watsons Go to Birmingham to serve as a catalyst for this conversation.
For a majority of the novel, Kenny remains seemingly unaware of his race and the pervasive racial tensions in his country. As he says, recounting the conversation between his mother and grandmother, "They talked about how much trouble people were having with some white people down here, who got married to who...a bunch of boring junk like that" (p. 166). By juxtaposing racial issues with mundane family matters, both Kenny and the author, Christopher Paul Curtis, intentionally downplay the significance of race. And yet, race pervades the narrative and Kenny's life in subtle but powerful ways. Within the first few pages, Kenny's father makes a lighthearted joke about the "Coloreds Only" bathroom in downtown Birmingham (p. 5). In school, Kenny reads a poem by Langston Hughes, a Harlem Renaissance poet who was unashamedly black and was criticized by some intellectuals for his less than idyllic portrayals of black life. Kenny's siblings both deal with identity issues centered around race - his brother, Byron, tries out a "Mexican" hair style and his sister, Joetta, rejects Mrs. Davidson's gift of a white clay angel because it doesn't look like her. On the road trip, Kenny is afraid to urinate in the woods because of Byron's warning: "They got crackers and rednecks up here... If they caught your ass out here, they'd hang you now" (p. 146).
Despite the very real presence of race in the novel, it takes a true historic event - the Birmingham church bombing that killed four young girls - to change Kenny into someone who understands the injustices his people face in American society. When he looks at himself in the mirror at the end of the novel, he begins to cry because racial prejudice is no longer "boring junk" to him but reality. He asks his brother "why" people would want to kill innocent children and Byron does not have an answer for him except to "keep on steppin'" (p. 203). And while Kenny may "keep on steppin," it will now be with the burden of his race on his shoulders and the resolve shared by those who stood up for equality in the Civil Rights Movement.
Even though the church bombing takes up fewer than eight pages of the story, Curtis' message is clear: race is a fundamental part of a person's history, family life, and identity; it cannot be ignored. I think this is an important message for me as a teacher as well. In the past, I have chosen to deal with race by being colorblind and this has not always been the best approach. Once, after a lesson on the Atlantic slave trade, one of my African American students came to me upset at the use of the word "Negro" in a primary source and, defensively, I brushed it off as "history." I wish I could go back and change that conversation to one about her own struggles with racial identity in an almost all-white private school. Decades after the Civil Rights Movement, race still has transformative power in the lives of young adolescents and it is a topic that needs to be discussed in the classroom, with or without a book like The Watsons Go to Birmingham to serve as a catalyst for this conversation.
Jess, we had an interesting conversation in our Urban Seminar last year about being "colorblind" toward race. I think you brought up a great point that race cannot be ignored. If we are to ignore our past, we cannot move toward an understanding and acceptance of each other. I think we have all had a similar experience as you mentioned above. As teachers in our generation, we must strive acknowledge the past and change the future. (And if we don't get it perfect, forgive ourselves along the way.)
ReplyDelete