The Final Verdict

Author: Candice Mays
Candice’s #teachread blog: Young Lakshmi
Categories: YA Lit, Web 2.o, Sold
Tags: WordPress, Sold, social justice, the canon

The Final Verdict

I have always had a passion for reading and literature. I admired the pensive English professor in his dusty office and the New York elite who discussed Chaucer at English parties. But, once I became of age to read Chaucer, I realized the literary “cannon” was not what got the reader in me going. I loved reading international novels about cultures I knew little about and often enjoyed novels that touched on social justice issues. My love for global literary perspectives and social justice are the exact reasons I chose Sold by Patricia McCormick as my young adult lit novel.

Sold’s content is continuously enriching on so many levels. Its short chapters and brief sentencing format are perfect for an adolescent’s short attention span while it incorporates many of the same issues as other young adult books like: sex, drugs, betrayal, leaving home, and self discovery. Except, with Sold, sex isn’t a topic of rebellion, it is one of force and slavery. It takes the media’s version of what sex is for teens and gives the topic more substance. Sure there are kids who get high and sleep around, but what about the ones who are drugged and forced to? These are questions that many American youths may not have asked because they have never been forced to ask them. There are other questions this brings up that challenges what young people and our society know about others.

This novel introduces a world of imprisonment and sex trafficking that most American teenagers have never and will never be exposed to. It helps put the privileged lives many teens live into perspective. Moreover, it sets the grounds for further exploration and action regarding this and/or other social injustices affecting adolescents worldwide. While reading this novel, I became more interested in India’s sex trade and decided to do more research on it for my own interest. I was upset with how McCormick made the novel’s heroes American instead of having an India person save Lakshmi (the protagonist) from her horror. So I went straight to Google and found Anuradha Koirala. Here was an Indian person saving her own people from her own country’s injustices. Not only was she Indian, but she was a woman, and Indian Female Hero. I was overjoyed to discover this wonderful woman and her work because it proved what I believed all along – that minority people can and are saving themselves everyday. I wanted to share this woman and her work with others and my Web 2.0 format what the perfect communication device.

I chose WordPress as my Web2.0 tool because I had used it to blog before and believed it was the most versatile of all the Web2.0 options. WordPress’ platform allows for text, imagery, videos, and music to be incorporated all at once. Therefore, instead of having to express myself and my thoughts on Sold only through writing in an Academic form, I could draw on my creative writing background and post in whatever format best suited whatever I was trying to say. In the post “What We Leave Behind,” I was so moved by the form McCormick used to write the chapter, with the same name, I experimented with it myself on my own blog, Young Lakshmi.

In addition to implementing creative writing as a means to connect with the novel through the Web 2.0 format, the format and its connection to the Internet also made it easier for me to draw upon my prior knowledge and connect to the novel in a way that was visibly concrete for me, my readers, and my instructor. While reading a portion of the novel where Lakshmi learns to say her name, I thought about a musical nonprofit that teaches its students to say their names before they teach them to them sing. I wanted to share this prior knowledge on my blog, not only because it illustrated my reading process for assessment, but also because it supported the social justice motif in Sold. After a quick Internet search, I was able to find the the nonprofit and incorporated this into a blog post as well.

Throughout the duration of this assignment, the constraints surrounding how we used our Web 2.0 formats were free form and I believe I will stick to that when I assign WordPress in my own English classroom as way for kids to document their progress through their independent reading books. Part of the fun of using WordPress was the sense of ownership I took away from this project. I looked at the finish product and thought every bit of this is mine. Although I would require them to properly format their blogs, to embed links, images, and videos — I would not require them to use any specific structure or write in any specific format. I would use this as the new millenium book report where I could assess not only if students are reading and enjoying their books, but whether or not they are using all of the mental tools necessary to be good readers. Sold changed the way I look at young adult literature and what should and shouldn’t be apart of the “cannon”. WordPress change how I, as an educator, will view book reports. The medium will be used as a tool to explore, not explicate novels.