Will My Name Be Shouted Out?: Reaching Inner-City Students Through the Power of Writing

Will My Name Be Shouted Out?: Reaching Inner-City Students Through the Power of Writing, by Stephen

O'Connor. New York: Touchstone Books, 1996. 382 pp. $14.00, paper.

Reviewed by Deloris M. Saunders, University of Maryland-Baltimore County.

Will My Name Be Shouted Out? presents a journalistic account of author Stephen O'Connor's experiences teaching creative writing in a New York City junior high school under the auspices of the Teachers and Writers Collaborative. The Collaborative has sponsored residencies by visiting writers and other artists in New York City schools since 1967. O'Connor produced this work to provide insights into the crisis in urban public schools that serve predominantly low-income children from racial/ethnic minority groups. He wanted to illustrate the plight of these students and the cynical, unabashed destruction of federal programs that benefit the poor and working classes.

The book is divided into three major sections comprising 16 chapters. Part one, "Innocence and Guilt," describes O'Connor's engagement as a writer in residence through the Collaborative. Part two, "On This Day a Poor Boy Died," discusses his pedagogy and methods of engaging his students in writing. Part three, "Will My Name Be Shouted Out?," describes his second year of teaching writing. Part three closes with an analysis of his feelings about his students and the "draconian shift in . . . social spending policies" in America (p. 377), along with a narrative on the ills of American policy affecting the poor.

Working without the benefit of pedagogical acumen, O'Connor attempted to engage junior high school students in expressing themselves through creative writing. Because his position was funded outside of the regular curriculum, he was able to use unconventional pedagogy, curriculum content, and standards. His interest soon shifted to creating a play that the students would present. He chose as the topic of this play the 1989 murder of Yusuf Hawkins, a young Black man who was killed in a racially motivated attack by more than a dozen White youths upon visiting New York City's Bensonhurst neighborhood to look at a used car. The incident became the center of racial crisis in a city already filled with racial tension caused by previous acts of violence. O'Connor states that he believed that the violence of the incident and the attendant publicity would motivate his students to write freely of their feelings about the event. He wanted his students to understand the feelings of both perpetrators and victims, hoping this would inspire them to be more compassionate. He also believed that their writings would lead to a deeper understanding about the effects of violence. Thus, he encouraged his students to write monologues, dialogues, and poetry about Bensonhurst or other violence they had witnessed. He encouraged free expression, including the use of profanity. He accepted non-standard English and applauded whatever contribution the students made, labeling some of them, even though barely readable, "brilliant" pieces of work.

O'Connor converted the students' writings into a play during their summer absence. He then engaged some adult colleagues to assist him in producing the play through the school's Drama Club. Noting that their attempts to produce the play were as difficult as his attempts to motivate the students to write, O'Connor recounts that the piece was finally presented and well-received. In the program's second year, he again struggled with motivating students to write, but moved more quickly to convert their writings into a play that was fraught with many of the same issues they faced the previous year. In both instances, however, he was required to remove profanity from the play to avoid upsetting parents.

O'Connor's intentions are noble, but he fails to make his point. He uses far more verbiage than necessary, and at times it appears that his trite descriptions of trivial interactions between students and between himself and his students displace more meaningful discussion. Readers thus are forced to struggle through a deluge of childish encounters and meaningless accounts. Plus, it is not apparent from the text whether O'Connor provided his students with any comments or feedback to improve their writing skills; readers are therefore left to believe that writing instruction was omitted from his curriculum. This drastically reduces the power of his work and any potential impact he might have had on teachers and students.

Given the poor quality of student writing O'Connor presents and the inclusion of profanity, Will My Name Be Shouted Out? is not recommended as a resource for K-12 teachers or students; rather, it seems more appropriate for recreational reading for adults. Notwithstanding these caveats, O'Connor makes a powerful statement in the concluding pages of his book when he proclaims:

When the poor are mentioned in public debate, they are almost never real people . . . but only the cliched embodiments of prominent social problems: teenage moms, welfare cheats, muggers, crackheads, failures. When the poor are not allowed to be real people, when they are defined only by the problems from which they suffer, it becomes all too easy to forget that these problems are not "natural" to them. . if anything, the poor hate the ghetto more than the middle class. . . (p. 377-378)

Had O'Connor remained faithful to his original purpose rather than become bemused by the events that his students recounted or engrossed in his journalizing, he might have produced a valuable educational resource for teaching writing.

Copyright Howard University Spring 1997
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