-: So what I'd specifically tell a fellow teacher
or a colleague about "Every Body Looking" is that
it is a very accessible text for a range of students,
those who are resistant to reading,
resistant to keeping their attention on something
that may be longer,
students who are struggling with an array of issues,
from body dysmorphia,
body image issues,
family problems, addiction,
identity issues, sexuality,
gender expression, bullying, even.
And beyond the fact that it's accessible
for all of these different topics,
it's just really great for a guided discussion,
prompted free writes,
and just open dialogue within your classroom
for students who take a little bit longer
to buy into the lesson.
There's just a array of things that come up in this story,
as it being about a young person who's about to leave home
and has been indoctrinated a certain way
and has been also taught things through trauma
that there are other ways of being
once we distance ourselves from the things
that caused us trauma.
I would really recommend it to other teachers
because it does a lot of the work for you.
It does a lot of the work for you in its word choice,
and it's brevity, and the different devices
that are used to tell a very complex story very simply.
So my experience in the classroom did something very,
very wonderful for me in writing "Every Body Looking"
in that it really taught me a lot
about how not to waste young people's time
with busy work and busy words.
And so I learned very early on as an educator
how to say exactly what I mean, to be clear, to be specific,
and I carried that over into my storytelling
in the emotions that I wanted to evoke
as well as in my ability to name the experiences
of my main character and for her to be very clear
in her voice and her convictions.
I also really learned a lot
about safety in my time as an educator
and how important it is to really become safer space
for a young person.
And that carried over
into writing the book
because I really had to be thoughtful.
I had to be really thoughtful and very mindful
about how I told this story
that houses a lot of trauma
and a lot of triggers for the reader.
And so I think, yeah,
I think largely what the classroom taught me,
as I wrote the book and as I revised the book,
was how to use the time and the space on the page wisely
and how to do it with care.
So of the 10 years that I spent in the classroom,
mainly as a creative writing facilitator and instructor
with high school students,
two of the biggest challenges I had
with my students was buy-in,
just getting them interested
in a topic or a discussion that I wanted to have
as well as them feeling
like their stories were important enough to tell.
And so I think I would specifically
use "Every Body Looking" to teach personal narrative
and how powerful and important it is
to tell your own specific story from your point of view.
And so I think two specific ways
that I would engage this text in my classroom is
through prompted free writes
where I'm guiding them using a piece of the text,
and then using it to, later on, have a guided discussion
around an experience
or a topic
that I might want to delve into
or just kind of like centering in on the literary devices
that the text uses.
Something really great about "Every Body Looking"
is that there are less words on the page,
but there are a lot of devices that are at play
at the same time,
so I think it's really easy to just pull a page
or pull a section from this story
and to just run with it.
I think it's also, on the personal narrative side,
it's also a great testament
to these simple yet nuanced experiences
that young people have that they don't think are a big deal.
There are a lot of moments like that in this story,
and I personally would use this as an educator
to kind of center in on these minute moments,
whether it be memory,
whether it be something that's happening in real time,
there's just lots of opportunities
to illustrate how important a lot
of these small moments are in a young person's life.
There are three novels
that I think work really well in conversation
with "Every Body Looking."
The first would be "The Stars
and the Blackness Between Them" by Junauda Petrus.
I think it's a really beautiful novel
that illustrates
a young person experiencing queer love
for the first time
and not shying away
from this desire that you're experiencing,
maybe possibly having to hide it
because you come from a family that doesn't understand it,
doesn't accept it,
you haven't seen a model of, you know,
love presented in a way that looks
like something that you're feeling in your body.
So I think it's just a really beautiful novel
that also illustrates
the differences between having a supportive family
and a family that's not so supportive
because of cultural differences.
Secondly, I think "I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter"
would pair well with "Every Body Looking"
because it's just a really, really honest telling
of what it might feel like to be
an immigrant's child
and this narrative
that they have sacrificed so much for you
and have done so much for you
that you have this incredible pressure to be perfect
or to be something that you aren't necessarily,
and the pressure
of measuring up to the standards
that your family have set for you,
and what it's like to figure out who you really are,
what you really like, what you want out of life.
And lastly, I think "Long Way Down" by Jason Reynolds
would pair really well with this.
It's another novel in verse
that really does a great job
of centering in on anger and the emotions
that a young person experiences when they're wronged
or have experienced some type of trauma
and how the many ways that they would like to respond,
the thoughts that they experience,
and how quickly all of that can happen,
and the many influences and things
that might cause a young person to either retaliate
or
really allow those traumatizing feelings
to become embodied.
And, yeah, I just think it would,
it works really well together
because the, naturally, the format's very similar
but also if you can,
you can very clearly hear the voice
of a young person in crisis.