Widening the Circle of Readers
A Conversation about Grace Paley's "A Conversation with My Father"
There was some favorable response to the last time I posted one of my assignments and then followed up with the responses of my students, so I want to try again with the hope that more of you will both share your own assignments and respond to the material presented here. In my presentation of the Robert Crosman article “How Readers Make Meaning,” he says that individuals make meaning alone and then together in the community of the classroom. This assignment tries to widen that circle of response even before the students enter the classroom by having them do some field work with at least one other reader. I ask them for their own responses to Grace Paley’s “A Conversation with My Father,” [link below], and then have a friend [or optimally, one of their own parents] read the story and then have a conversation about the protagonist’s conversation with her father. This expands the circle of Reader Response but also gets the students to talk about the issues of what makes a story and why do we read them beyond the boundaries of the class itself.
Below is the assignment I’ll be giving to my students and will follow it up next week with selections from them and my analysis of the process.
Reading, Writing and Field Work on Grace Paley’s “A Conversation with My Father”
Note: Due to the field research part of this journal, you will have two classes to prepare your response.
Part One: Your Own Reading. Read carefully Grace Paley’s “A Conversation with My Father” on Canvas. What are some of the things going on here? What relations can you draw between the story (ies) being told within it and the frame story around these stories?
You might consider why Paley decides to write a story about story telling. What are the differences between the two versions of the story? Which do you like better, and why? What can you say about the larger “story” between the narrator and her father? Does this add or detract from the stories embedded within it? What can you say about the narrative voice(s) here?
Part Two: Field Research. Now, find someone else to read the story and afterward have your own conversation with him or her about it. Given the inter-generational nature of the story, a parent might be ideal, but if that won’t work, you can try a friend or roommate. You can either interview that person using some of the questions or issues here or just have an informal talk.
Did they like the stories? Did they hear them both as “stories”? Which version did they prefer and why?
Then, say something about their responses, in terms of what you think your interlocutor learned from the exercise and what did you learn?
What questions were raised in the process of this assignment that you’d like to bring to the class as a whole?