Elisa Frias is an English Language Arts teacher, grant writer, former robotics adviser, teacher consultant for the CSUN Writing Project, author, mother, and lover of cats.
I was a teen in the ’90s. Like all teens, I was forming my identity and influenced by the larger cultural influences around me. As the child of a white father and a Mexican American mother, I absorbed the messaging swirling around me about immigration and the battle for cultural dominance that seemed to be playing out—a push and pull between the two sides of myself. At times, I was led to believe that a part of me was inferior and meant to be hidden.
That’s why I am grateful I have a storyteller for a tía. Driving through the streets of San Antonio where my family has deep roots, my aunt took me to the “purple house,” once owned by Mexican American author Sandra Cisneros. The purple house, in the historic King William district, caused quite a stir when Cisneros first painted it that distinct shade of periwinkle. As she understood it, bright colors were and are historically appropriate in Texas because Tejanos have been there for many, many generations. And yet, when Cisneros’ “offensive” purple violated the homeowners association’s rules against non-historic colors in the neighborhood, an opportunity to reteach and retell the history of the Southwest emerged. Cisneros explains, “When they ask me to prove my colors historically appropriate to King William, they don’t mean Tejano colors. But I am certain Tejanos lived in this neighborhood, too.” (“My Purple House – Color Is a Language and a History”).
Hearing my aunt colorfully tell the story, and show me the visual evidence of cultural survival, even in the context of efforts to erase us—it all sparked something beautiful and affirming within me. Equipped with this story and other family stories of cultural preservation, I was able to construct an identity that allows all parts of me to coexist and thrive. This is the power of story.
Every one of us is a product of a story, or rather, multiple interlocking stories. The narratives we hold to be true (complete with triumphs, follies, conflicts, resolutions, and themes) shape what we believe about ourselves, others, and the world. This is what makes the high school English Language Arts classroom such a powerful place. Just as students are forming their identities as young adults in the world, they are encountering stories in the classroom that either reflect, augment, or perhaps even challenge the narratives that organize their mental life.
This is the primary reason I am so passionate about the upcoming Ethnic Studies graduation requirement in California. As an interdisciplinary field that gives voice to the people and groups who have so often been silenced in academia, Ethnic Studies disrupts singular, overly simplistic narratives by injecting more diverse perspectives. These stories have the potential to empower our students who have been disempowered and to improve our students’ empathy and understanding of each other. Ample research has shown that Ethnic Studies courses have long-lasting, positive effects on students’ self-concepts, success in school, and ability to function productively in a pluralistic society.
Since the fall of 2021, I’ve taught a class called English 12 Ethnic Cultures, a course designed specifically to incorporate Ethnic Studies principles into English Language Arts. After doing this work for some time, I am convinced that the Language Arts classroom is a perfect place for this kind of work. English teachers are natural storytellers, and our classrooms can be the place where students’ own stories emerge. Within the field of Ethnic Studies, narrative and especially counternarratives provide a primary methodology for teaching. Counternarratives give students an alternative or opposing narrative or explanation of events. Unfortunately, students receive many damaging, limiting, or outright harmful narratives about themselves and others from the outside world. The English Language Arts classroom can and should be a place where those stories are challenged.
When my colleagues and I went looking for a text for our English 12 Ethnic Cultures classroom, we found the diversity of voices in Norton’s Uncharted Territory to fit our needs. We start the year with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s “The Danger of a Single Story” (282–296), as it provides a perfect explanation of what we are going to accomplish in this course. Just as a single story limits students and others by narrowly defining their possibilities, conversely, having access to a multitude of stories liberates. I want students to have a model for how to seek out diverse narratives, engage with complexity, and challenge stories that simply repeat stereotypes. As Adichie explains, “Stories matter. Many stories matter. Stories have been used to dispossess and to malign, but stories can also be used to empower and to humanize. Stories can break the dignity of a people, but stories can also repair that broken dignity” (294).
By definition and design, Ethnic Studies is an interdisciplinary field. It is common for readings in an Ethnic Studies course to draw from history, sociology, psychology, economics, art, and other disciplines. Similarly, a rich Language Arts course asks students to engage with texts in which the characters (real or fictional) exist within a complex web of social conditions. Such are the reading selections in Uncharted Territories. In “On Being a Refugee, an American—and a Human Being,” Viet Thanh Nguyen grapples with the multifacetedness of his own social positions, adding “there are many who think these identities cannot be reconciled” (630). This conversation invites students to consider current events and make interdisciplinary connections to our readings. We are living through an era in which the perennial question “What does it mean to be ‘American’?” has reemerged with full force. Through these readings, students come to understand more of the social context that shapes their world and inspires so much culturally relevant literature.
I encourage this type of thinking by asking students to make “text to world,” “text to self,” and “text to text” connections. Such an open-ended strategy allows students to link their learning to events they read about in the news, experience in their own lives, or other readings we have studied in class. For example, in “At the Root of Identity,” Claude M. Steele discusses “identity contingencies—the things you have to deal with in a situation because you have been given a social identity” (541). Having previously engaged with this concept, students can apply their understanding of identity contingencies to the reading “On Being a Refugee…” and explain with more depth and detail how the various contingencies the author has both define and complicate the author’s sense of self.
Throughout the year, rich classroom discussions emerge from the interplay between disciplines and texts. Students become adept at discussing literary devices and sociological concepts seamlessly in the same space. They engage simultaneously with both form and content. But more importantly, they grow an appreciation for the complexity and diversity of the human experience. And this comes at a time when they are discovering their own identities and developing an awareness of broader social structures. Through the reading selections and rich discussions, they are given models of breaking stereotypes, and growing into identities not limited by overly simplistic narratives.
Where I teach in California, the new Ethnic Studies graduation requirement provides a powerful tool to give students affirming narratives that will help shape their futures. Even outside of California, a text like Uncharted Territories can have the same effect. Where book bans and other attempts at censorship restrict possibilities, a good anthology with broad representation might inject some badly needed diversity.
Many envision Ethnic Studies as the domain of History teachers, but this need not be the case. Students bring their identities and the self-affirming or self-defeating narratives they hold with them into every classroom. So, it stands to reason that every classroom can and should help them construct a self-concept that will enable their success. The English Language Arts classroom, equipped with a diverse array of narratives, can be that place.
MEET THE AUTHOR
Elisa Frias is an English Language Arts teacher, grant writer, former robotics adviser, teacher consultant for the CSUN Writing Project, author, mother, and lover of cats. Her articles on AI, and Ethnic Studies have appeared in California English. She has delivered professional development for the Los Angeles County Office of Education, the Antelope Valley Union High School District, and for multiple years at CATE Conventions. Elisa is especially proud of the work she has done in her home district to help develop the English Ethnic Cultures curriculum, and champions bringing Ethnic Studies principles into every classroom. You can reach her at elisafrias@educationforthepublic.org.