Big Picture Talkers/Words Walking Without Masters: The Instructional Implications of Ethnic Voices for an Expanded Literacy

Abstract

Jody Starks, a major character in Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937/1990), is accused by his wife Janie, the story's protagonist, of being busy listening tuh yo' own (p. 82). Janie believed that God made humans each with a special spark and that God intended each spark to shine. Because Jody Starks was too full of his own voice, he was unable to see Janie's shine. An analogy can be drawn between the fictive Jody Starks and the academy of both researchers and classroom teachers. The academy is so full of its own voice that it diminishes and (more often than not) tarnishes the shine of those children who are not White and middle-class. The voices of America's diverse ethnic populations each have a linguistic power that too often only the creative writer-the novelist, the poet, the dramatist, and creative essayist-hears and appreciates. The present article offers an example of the voice of one such community: the African American community. It attempts to describe the craft with which that community's talk is sculpted and re-created at another level by creative writers who consciously acknowledge the voices of those whom Hurston calls big picture talkers-adults and youths from the porch stoops and street corners of African America-as a source of inspiration. Lest anyone fear that I am simply joining the ranks of those who rancor for the inclusion of African American literature in schools because of the positive self-esteem that Black youth can gain from reading such literature, let me caution that this article attempts to stake out new territory. I offer herein that the union of novice readers and ethnic literature provides a great deal more than ethnic pride. Rather, it can support a pedagogical scaffolding between reader and literary text capable of building the skills of literary analysis that most youth in American schools simply miss (Lee, 1991b). The most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) scores indicate that the best of America's students have difficulty reading below the surface meaning of texts, and most cannot support their inferences about what they have read with evidence (Mullis et al., 1990). Marshall's (1989, 1990) field studies present a picture in which teachers dominate classroom talk about literature,