The real texts of student's lives:
Interview with Abram Himelstein of the Neighborhood Story Project
Abram Himelstein co-founded the Neighborhood Story Project with urban anthropologist Rachel Breunlin. In 2003, when both were teaching writing at New Orleans' John McDonogh High, an impoverished, almost-all black school, a shooting took place at the school. It resulted in the death of student and injury of three others. Breunlin and Himelstein created the Project as a place for students to explore the stories of their lives: to write about where they come from, and to portray how they live. The community documentary project has created five books by students: a mixture of memoir, interviews, photographs, and local history. Abe Louise Young met with Himelstein at the Bouldin Creek Coffeehouse in Austin, Texas in March 2006 to discuss the philosophies and methods behind the Project.
WKCD: What in your life brought you to the Neighborhood Story Project?
HIMELSTEIN: Everything in my life brought me to the Neighborhood Story Project. I was teaching at John McDonogh Senior High, which is on Esplanade and Broad in New Orleans. I was the worst teacher I've ever been—not because I wasn't trying, but because of the climate of chaos in the school prevented me from getting any real teaching done. I was teaching writing and I was unable to get anybody interested in what I thought writing meant. Occasionally, I'd have some good days or I'd do a lesson just right and things would work, but mostly it was like...New Orleans Public Schools are a crime against kids and I was participating in that crime. I wasn't comfortable with it; I was really depressed and coming home every day sour and feeling kind of bleak about my city, and about my neighborhood.
I was teaching across the hall from this woman, Rachel Breunlin...she was teaching in a closet and I was teaching in someone else's classroom. But she was doing better than I was because I am a very strict teacher and she was a very loving teacher. Her love undermined their ability to create chaos, and so they just fell into line. She and I started talking about what a real writing program would look like. We started thinking about the things that were important to the students and what that really looked like for them: they were really into their neighborhoods.
With that, we started thinking about the things that might motivate students to actually give a damn about their writing.
|
WKCD: What do you think can get a high school student deeply motivated about writing? HIMELSTEIN: Writing has to seem like an essential part of their lives. We'd had some little bit of success in the classroom having students write about their neighborhoods, so we decided, "Let's do this thing where they make a book. Publication always inspires. Rachel had done all these books in her classroom: small books that the other students loved to read. It just had this power to it. So, Let's tap into that power. And, if we're having them do a book, we have to pay them. Because I personally don't ever write unless I get paid. It's a rule of mine.
|
|
So let's have them get paid: we'll have each student write a book about their block. It'll take four months, and we'll pay them $1,000 at the end of it. It'll be like an after-school job. Rich kids can do internships, so they get to do intellectual labor which then makes them ready to do intellectual labor for a living; whereas, working-class students have to get jobs that aren't intellectual. I was very into the idea of paying them for intellectual labor.
We went around to tell all the English classes, and we said, "Look, we're doing this thing. You write a book about your block. You get paid $1,000." Everyone seemed interested and seven students applied so we took all seven.
WKCD: How did you create the environment for this to work?
HIMELSTEIN: We had to get an office outside of the school. Otherwise, the culture of the school would subsume what we are trying to do. We rented an apartment across the street and put in one table, and started using it.
WKCD: What was the process of getting students so deeply invested in their stories?
HIMELSTEIN: The first part of the year was convincing them that they were writers and this could be done. We read this book called Our America: Life and Death on the South Side of Chicago, which was written with David Isay by junior high to high school kids in the Ida B. Wells Housing Project in Chicago. That was a turning point: everyone was like, Oh, we can do this. We made these posters of photos that they had taken. I taught them photography and when that poster came out, it was like "this is really going to happen." There were all these moments during the year when corners were turned and they got closer to believing in it....
It's a real flip to get people to self-identify as writers. We work on that for about nine weeks, the first quarter of the year. It was just about, "This is a journal, this is free writing, this is vignettes, this is editing, this is storytelling, this is narrative arc, this is dialogue, this is all these things." And all the time, you're reading books that you hope they're interested in. They're talking about it and breaking down what good literature looks like, and coming to see themselves as a part of that continuum.
There was a certain point in each student's process, where their names were on it: it was who they were; it was going to represent them. The money was always there, but it was about the books. That part was interesting and great to go through. In the end when we were copy-editing, we were pushing kids out the door, like, "You have to go home now, and it's nine at night." And they were like "No, there might be a mistake still!" Kesha is a dancer and once she brought over a couple people from her dance team to help her copy-edit. And I was like, okay, this is what I was hoping for when this whole thing started.
WKCD: Is it possible for you to break the process down into a series of steps? How you can accomplish a book from inception to publication with this group of kids?
HIMELSTEIN: Well, first we put a team together of people to talk about the idea, to see whether or not it was stupid. That team was G. K. Darby, who is a publisher in New Orleans, and Kalamu Ya Salaam, who is a long-time New Orleans writer and publisher. And Tim Lupin, who has been on the Jazz Fest Board and who is a friend of mine, and a couple of school teachers. We did that for a while, and we started hustling money to try to get that going, and talking through the idea enough so that you get good at talking about it.
|
WKCD: How much money did you end up needing? HIMELSTEIN: Around $45,000—but that's not including my salary and Rachel's salary, which were covered by two organizations that stepped forward to partner with us when we were just a dream. They were the University of New Orleans, and the Literacy Alliance of Greater New Orleans. They really understood what this could mean for the community, and they did a great job of leading us and pushing us and allowing us, all three of those things.
|
|
After the first nine weeks of getting people to self-identify as writers, then you move into the body of, the next eighteen weeks where it's getting students and us into the community, and getting the community into the book. That means getting out and doing interviews and taking photographs, and then getting those transcribed and edited and taking those back to the people.
As we moved into the community work, Rachel Breunlin really led the way. What she had a gift for was taking interviews back to people and having them edit them. That helped them community members to believe that there was a book coming out with them in it, so they weren't surprised when that eventually happened. It also it made sure there was nothing in there that was going to set off a bad reaction....So the community ownership of the book really came in that process.
WKCD: Can you say more about those two steps, which are easy to rush or ignore: making sure that people who are being represented have a real say in the text, and building the fabric of trust and equality with the community?
HIMELSTEIN: It's really important to take interviews back to people. That speaks to what I was really hoping to do with the whole project: in addition to being a good teacher, we were going to create literature that was meaningful to the neighborhood. If you're going to do that, then people have to feel ownership of it...and they can't feel that unless they actually own it.
We don't get the signed permission forms until people clear their own interviews and they check stuff. People are not grateful, and they shouldn't be. I think that's where a lot of arrogance of these kinds of projects comes, is their downfall—expecting people to be grateful for the opportunity to be represented.
Our motto is "Our story is told by us." I'm sick of other people getting New Orleans' stories wrong, and seeing my neighborhood misrepresented by national media. Especially more so, post-hurricane, but even pre-hurricane, you get to see the stories wrong constantly. Ebony writes in her book that she lost a year of school because a newspaper reporter misrepresented her words after a shooting at John McDonough, and she was essentially afraid to go to school for a whole year. She lost a year of her life due to people getting stories wrong, and the arrogance of outsiders telling insiders' stories.
WKCD: Is there anything else that should be done to ensure this integrity?
HIMELSTEIN: The other important thing we do is to form a book committee for each book. The students pick one person and Rachel and I pick one person, and somebody from their family comes, and they all read the book. It's like a test market. I feel really grateful that the parents and families were excited about being chronicled, and no one was surprised when the books came out. This was one of the keys to having people embrace them, because there were a lot of intimate stories told in the books that are painful and hard and brave.
WKCD: Can you talk about what literacy means in the context of the City of New Orleans, the education system, and the future?
HIMELSTEIN: Well, I want to say I live in New Orleans because I find it to be the most literate about the quality-of-life city that I've ever been to. People are literate there about social graces that other cities will never ever touch. We're good at checking in with each other and caring for each other. We are really, really bad about creating systems that are just and equitable. As a result, our literacy in terms of reading and writing rates are some of the worst in the country.
|
I was taking the subway once in New York City, which is extremely illiterate when it comes to dancing and music and community. But when you're on the subway, every single person has something in front of their face—maybe just as a screen—but it's writing and it's reading. Most of the people are reading. I was thinking how different that was from New Orleans. An incredible percentage of the city is functionally illiterate.
|
|
And I was thinking about how difficult it is to get my students to read books. I think a lot of that is because a lot of literature does not speak to us and isn't about us and tells our stories wrong. So that was the point for me: that people will struggle through the process of reading a lot more if there is something meaningful to them in there.
For me a part of what I had to come to terms with was the sometimes uncomfortable roles of the authority figure, with being the person in power in the classroom. And with my own misguided beliefs that I could save students from the circumstances of their lives. "Saving" is not an appropriate way to interface with other people. So, I had to let go of all that, and at the same time figure out if I was willing to take on this authority position. Teaching is very hard, and you have to have something to believe in if you are going to do it. You know, why am I here? I had to work out my own discomfort and determine exactly what I was using that power and authority for, if I was going to occupy it.
I started teaching when I was twenty-two in Washington, D.C. I had this amazing student my first year named Rudolfo—he came up to me one day with a bunch of scribble on his paper. He was in first grade at this time—and his writing looked crazy. He'd spent a lot of time working on it. "What's this about, Rudolfo?" So he reads, "Well, the man was saying to the other man in jail, 'I could kill you. I could kill you so easily. I could kill you with one hand tied behind my back! I could kill you so fast you would not even know what was happening. In fact, I could kill you—'" It went on and on, it was almost poetic, with death threats and ways this guy could kill him. It was awesome, awesome spirit.
Rudolfo was the youngest of eight, and all of his older brothers were actually in jail. This was this cathartic moment to me when I realized that—I hoped not, but statistically speaking, it was highly likely that Rudolfo was going to spend some time in the joint. And I wasn't going to be able to save him. S, you know, I realize that it matters whether or not Rudolfo can read when he goes there (if he goes there.) Because these will be the tools with which he begins to unfurl the rest of his life. These will be the tools that he uses to write to his girlfriend who is not in jail.
Literacy is what I care about; this is the part of Western culture that I deeply believe in and am willing to go to bat for. I am willing to play the sometimes-uncomfortable roles of the authority figure in order to get this kind of teaching done. And the rest of it, you know, the rest of it has flown out from that, developed from that moment of I actually believe in reading and writing. I believe in it as a way of taking down the colonial structure that I think is in place.