entry 11: the biography genre

"Biographical writing focuses on people."
(Tompkins, 2012, p. 230)

I want to take this time to reflect on the biography genre and everything I learned from Tompkins (2012) as well as from the Biography Genre Workshop led by my peers. Before reading this chapter from Tompkins (2012) or participating in the workshop, I thought I knew basically all there was to know about this genre -- but I was wrong! I had initially thought there were really only two types of biographies: autobiographies and biographies. But I learned through reading Tompkins (2012) that there are actually four types of life stories:

• Personal narratives are first-person accounts of single events from the writer's own life.
• Memoirs are stories to interpret events in a writer's life.
• Autobiographies are sketches of the writer's entire life.
• Biographies are stories about selected events in a person's life.

                                                                                                                             (Tompkins, 2012, p. 230)

I had heard the terms "personal narrative" and "memoir" before, but for some reason I hadn't connected those terms to the biography genre. History (aka Social Studies) was always my favorite subject in school, so I was always interested in reading texts from the biography genre, especially as an elementary student. I loved learning about famous people in history and what their lives were like. 

Maddison's article and her research really stood out to me. An important quote that she highlighted from her article was:

"...biography - a genre that often sticks to a script in which an exceptional person overcomes adversity and succeeds." ~Marshall, 2019, p. 167

Some interesting questions were also brought to my attention during the Biography Genre Workshop. Maddison had asked us questions that were asked within her article, such as:

• Who gets to tell their story and how?
• What kinds of life stories are welcome in the classroom?
• How might experiences of racism, discrimination, and resistance that students experience in their everyday lives be acknowledged through life writing?
• How can language arts educators work with these stories in critically pedagogic ways?

                                                                                                                                (Marshall, 2019, p. 175)

I think these questions are really important to consider as a teacher. How can I ensure that I am including all life stories in my classroom, and making my students feel heard and represented? Muhammad (2020) discusses the importance of drawing upon and responding to "the histories, identities, and literacy and language practices of students for teaching and learning" (Muhammad, 2020, p. 49). She also emphasizes the importance of the four pursuits: identity, skills, intellect, and criticality (Muhammad, 2020, p. 58). I think by ensuring that I have a multitude of biographies told from different people and different perspectives, I can meet these goals. It is important that I continue to evaluate my text selections within my classroom library and ask myself: are these texts representative of the members of our classroom community? If I discover that there aren't enough representative texts, it is my job to find some and include them in my classroom library.

It is important that I include biographies for my students within my classroom library that don't only highlight the successes in a person's life, because that isn't sending an accurate message. Everyone faces challenges within their life, and sometimes you cannot overcome them. It is crucial that I provide accurate representations of life's struggles and how these people may not have succeeded, but maybe never gave up.

It will also be important to teach my students to read their texts from the biography genre with a critical lens; who wrote this book? Is this book written by who the text is about, or just from their point of view? This can be very difficult to grasp, specifically in the biography genre. I was struggling myself a bit during the Biography Genre Workshop to identify what type of biography I was reading.

I feel like I was able to build and develop a strong understanding of the biography genre from what I learned reading Tompkins (2012) as well as from the Biography Genre Workshop. I can't wait to see how I can develop my understanding of the poetry genre this week!

References

Marshall, E. (2019). Life writing and the language arts. Language Arts, 96(3), 167-178.

Muhammad, G. (2020). Cultivating genius: An equity framework for culturally and historically                     responsive literacy. New York, NY: Scholastic