Saturday, October 31, 2015

Remixing Kelly Norman Ellis's "Raised by Women"

students working on remixes

On Thursday, October 29, at the SIUE/East St. Louis Charter High School, I worked with students on remixes of Kelly Norman Ellis's poem "Raised by Women." Ellis's poem remains a favorite among my college students, so I was curious what might be possible with a high school group.

First, we read and discussed Ellis's poem and then we used scaffolding from her poem to produce our own versions.

Ellis's poem opens:
I was raised by
Chitterling eating
Vegetarian cooking
Cornbread so good you want to lay
down and die baking
"Go on baby, get yo’self a plate"
Kind of Women.

and later, she writes:

Some fingerpopping
Boogaloo dancing
Say it loud
I’m black and I’m proud
James Brown listening
"Go on girl shake that thing"
Kind of Sisters.
The prompt I created goes:
I was raised by
___________________ eating
___________________ cooking
____________________ so good you want to lay
down and die baking
"Go on baby, get yo’self a plate"
Kind of___________________________.

and then:

Some _________________________
________________________ dancing
Say it loud
I’m black and I’m proud
Kind of _______________________

Here's how some of the students responded:

I was raised by
neckbone eating
soul food cooking
mhm mhm mhm so good you want to lay
down and die baking
"Go on baby, get yo’self a plate"
Kind of family.

Some outspoken kids
nae-nae dancing
Say it loud
"Hit the Quan!"
Kind of cousins  --D.L.
And another student responded: 
I was raised by
chocolate eating
brownie cooking
cookies so good you want to lay
down and die baking
"Go on baby, get yo’self a plate"
Kind of people.


Some prancing
going to church dancing
Say it loud
I'm black and I'm proud
complicated kind of women  --J.O.
Related:
Remixing Allison Joseph's "Thirty Lines" Poem at the East St. Louis Charter High School 
Fall 2015 Programming

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