"For My People" Example #6

I loved this poem...Several students who identify as "white" wrote about the various racial identities that they have, which was cool...

"For My People" Example #5

This student honors his Filipino heritage and the diversity of the Philipines...I love the way he uses numbers...

"For My People" Example #4

Another empowered voice...Many students incorporated rhyme, though it was not a requirement...

"For My People" Example #3

I felt that the most effective poems were the ones that were honoring and celebrating a single "people"...like this one...

"For My People" Example #2

Some students chose to focus each stanza on a different group of "their people"...Like Jordan, many students revealed personal information that made for good poetry.

"For My People" Example #1

Some students took a humorous approach...Zach's poem also has a somewhat aggressive tone (though lighthearted), which was common in many poems....Many of the poems seemed to embrace stereotypes, which makes readers feel a bit uncomfortable, but I think that's part of their effectiveness. I have no idea, though, whether students consciously did this...

In some cases, I felt like some of the poems just read like a list of stereotypes, which I'm not sure, by itself, makes for effective poetry, though I can see how it might be a sort of disempowering of those stereotypes...I'm not sure how I feel about it yet. I liked that most students, like Zach, played with stereotypes but also made visible some of the invisible work  or qualities of their "people" (i.e. in Zach's poem, he calls attention to the Mexican migrant laborers who pick fruit, and Mexican artists' contributions to the hip-hop, etc.).