Voice and Choice in Literature

Many ELA educators are likely familiar with Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop’s metaphor that literature can work as a “mirror” to reflect and affirm a reader’s identity and as a “window” that enables a reader to experience the perspectives and beliefs of those who may differ from them. ¹ Not only is this approach identity-affirming, it is also engaging and broadens students’ thinking about themselves and others.

In addition to reading widely, students benefit from opportunities to look critically at the texts they choose and the ones chosen for them in order to analyze the perspectives, voices, and representation included in and missing from these stories. Through this process, they can come to understand that there are different perspectives that the author deliberately constructs to convey what they want the reader to think about or know. In a similar way, students make choices in the stories they tell and how they tell them. 

The following learning experiences provide students with opportunities to evaluate texts in order to identify the perspectives that are represented and to see if there are other perspectives that they should take into consideration before reimagining their own perspective into the text.

• 1Reading Rockets, “Mirrors, windows and sliding doors,” YouTube video, 01:33, January 30, 2015.

Before using this learning experience, please review the following information to help guide your preparation process.

Introduce: Reflect on Identity, Passions, and Perspective

Start by having students review their personal identity charts and journal reflections. Then have them reflect on the following questions in their journals before sharing their ideas with a partner. 

• What aspects of your identity are most important to your sense of who you are? 
• What do you care about? In other words, what matters to you?
• How does your identity influence your perspective on the things you care about?

Explore: Evaluate Perspective and Imagine Yourself into the Text

1. Let students know that they will be evaluating the author’s choices about representation and perspective. Introduce the Voice and Choice thinking routine by having students work in pairs to discuss the following questions. They should use the publication information in the front of the text to help them answer questions about context. Depending on their familiarity with the author, they may need to skip some of the questions or do light research to try to answer them. 
   • Consider the context: Where was the text written and by whom? Where was it published? When was it published? What else was going on at this place and time?
   • Maker choices: What choices do you think the author(s) made when writing this text? Why do you think they made these choices? 
   • Voices present: Whose voices are present in this text? What perspectives are represented? What are the limits of the voices we are hearing? 
   • Voices missing: Whose voices are missing from this text? What perspectives are not represented? Why do you think that is?
2. Have pairs form groups of four to discuss their ideas and add to their notes. Then have students respond to the following questions on their own. Let them know that they will be sharing their ideas with their small groups. 
   • My voice: What’s your voice? What perspectives do you bring to this text? 
   • My choice: What could you do to redesign or reimagine this text to better represent your perspective(s)? What makes you say that? (You can focus on a section of the text or the text as a whole).
3. After students have had time to reflect on the previous two questions, invite them to share their ideas with their group members. 
   
   Interact: Share the perspective you bring and your ideas for a redesign with your group. Ask your group members to answer these questions: Whose voices and perspectives do you see represented in my version of the text? Whose voices and perspectives do you think are missing? 
4. Then have students return to their journals for a final reflection that considers the following questions. 
   
   Reflect: Now that you have received feedback, look closely at your redesign and consider whose voices and perspectives are missing from the redesigned content. If the feedback from your peer(s) is not what you intended or expected, is that okay with you? If not, how might you continue to redesign this content? Finally, what do you think the author would think of your redesign?
5. Facilitate a class discussion so groups can share ideas and new understanding from their discussions. You could frame the discussion with the following question: What surprising, interesting, and/or troubling new understanding or insight emerged from your Voice and Choice discussions and reflections?

This learning experience adapts the Voice and Choice thinking routine. ¹

Extend: Reimagine Your Perspective into the Text

Recasting a text from their own perspective sparks students’ creativity and invites agency. For this writing task, invite students to reimagine a character, scene, or setting in the text to reflect their perspective and the ideas that matter to them. 

Students might choose one of the following ideas for this writing task:

• Re-story the time or place to locate a scene from the text in the present day or in a familiar place like the student’s community or school. 
• Retell a scene from the point of view of a character that represents an aspect of their identity or from their perspective so as to broaden the perspectives represented in the text. 
• Recast the story in a different genre that the student cares about more deeply to better reflect their unique voice. For example, write a scene as a spoken-word poem. Reimagine a dialogue as a series of text messages. Recast an internal monologue as a blog post. 

Extend: Write a Book Review that Raises Awareness about Perspective

When students write book reviews, they must engage critically with the text in order to evaluate it, as well as incorporate their own perspective as a reader. While this is usually done at the end of a unit of study, students can also write short reviews of a chapter to develop their writing skills and practice with a smaller chunk of text. 

1. Start by reading a sampling of mentor-text book reviews as a class, choosing ones where the writer discusses voice and choice (represented and/or misrepresented or missing voices, as well as the author’s choices of character, theme, tone, etc.). You can find reviews on book review sites like Kirkus Reviews or Publishers Weekly, newspaper websites like the New York Times or Washington Post, or blogs like Book Riot. Discuss the components of a book review, listing ideas on the board. Most book reviews include a brief summary, a critical argument, and a recommendation for the reader. Focus on the critical argument that the author of each book review makes and the evidence they provide to develop it. 
2. Have students draft their own book review for the text they are studying, using one or more of the samples you chose as a model. For the critical argument section, have them focus on the author’s choices, the voices present, and any missing/misrepresented voices, drawing evidence from the text and their own lived experiences. They can share their reviews in a gallery walk or small-group discussions to compare their analyses. 

• 1“Voice and Choice” is adapted for a work of literature from a thinking routine developed by educators at Harvard University’s Project Zero.