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Ubiquity: The Journal of Literature, Literacy, and the Arts,

Praxis Strand, Vol.4 No.2, Fall/Winter 2017, pp. 15-33

Ubiquity: http://ed-ubiquity.gsu.edu/wordpress/

ISSN: 2379-3007

Writing Fiction for Social Transformation

© Christine E. Sleeter

California State University Monterey Bay

Correspondence concerning this article should be directed to Christine E. Sleeter,

118 ½ Dunecrest Ave., Monterey, CA 93940.

Contact: csleeter@gmail.com

Ubiquity: The Journal of Literature, Literacy, and the Arts, Praxis Strand, Vol.4 No.2,

Fall/Winter 2017

Sleeter WRITING FICTION

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Abstract

Transforming education for social justice, particularly racial justice, has constituted the core of

my work as a teacher educator. So after having authored, co-authored, and edited almost twenty

academic books toward that end, it came as a surprise to many that I turned to writing fiction,

specifically the novel, White Bread (2015). Why and how did I do that? In this essay, I discuss

three reasons I chose to write research as fiction: 1) to bring a suppressed history to life; 2) to

illustrate the method and potential of critical family history; and 3) to prompt teachers to

envision themselves as social justice change agents.

Keywords: Multicultural; fiction; activism

Ubiquity: The Journal of Literature, Literacy, and the Arts, Praxis Strand, Vol.4 No.2,

Fall/Winter 2017

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Writing Fiction for Social Transformation

Bringing a Suppressed History to Life

August, 1928

Mary collapsed into the wooden chair in front of the desk and dropped her face into her

hands. It had been three months since Heinrich had succumbed to a stroke, but she

couldn’t get used to his absence. . . . .Raising her head, she surveyed the empty

cubbyholes in the old wooden desk. All their married life, this desk had been a

cacophony of bits of paper, newspaper articles, letters, books propped open to this or that

quotation to use in a sermon, and notebooks filled with Heinrich’s longhand scrawl. . . .It

stood here now in a corner of the living room, an empty monument to his work.

Mary was convinced that what killed him was having to spend three years watching

his life’s work unravel like a sweater when a cat runs away with a loose end of yarn. But

really, things had started to disintegrate much earlier, with the mounting pressure during

the war for churches to dispense with German. Even before the war, there had always

been that element that felt threatened by things German. Mary hadn’t thought they held

much sway, but then look what happened once fear took hold in more English-speakers.

The German churches had complied with wartime demands. Heinrich, occasionally

invited to deliver guest sermons, had done them all in English. She, too, had complied

when hosting meetings of the German Methodist Woman's Missionary Society entirely in

English. Somehow that compliance seemed only to confuse things, however. English-

speaking congregations began to wonder why German churches were still needed, if they

could do just as well in English. Why not make everything English, unite the Methodists

once and for all.

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At the time, the German churches replied that their continued growth was evidence of

why they were needed. Indeed, the Decatur church boasted a healthy congregation, at

least until the middle of the war. But the English remained suspicious that rather than

bringing souls to Gott, Pfarrers like Heinrich were actually bringing them to the Kaiser.

Nonsense, really, but when people are afraid, they believe all sorts of things they might

question in other circumstances.

Figure 1. Zion Chapel in Boody, Illinois.

Historical fiction, which Harripersaud (2014) terms “historically accurate fiction,” or

history with a little “romance and suspense thrown in,” is often used as a teaching tool. Nawrot

(1996) explains that in historical fiction, “names and events are given a background setting and

context,” unlike history texts that decontextualize events and people. Readers of historical fiction

feel characters’ suffering and pain, their joys and triumphs. Students enter the world of historical

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figures, not only learning about, but becoming personally engaged in history (Rider, 2013;

Smith, Monson & Dobson, 1993).

In writing fiction, I sought to immerse readers in the lives of two German-American

bilingual, bicultural families who lived in the Midwest during the 1800s and early 1900s. While

German is the largest ethnic ancestry of U.S. Americans (including my father’s side of the

family), surprisingly little has been written about its history; most people of German descent

know virtually nothing of it. In fact, White Americans commonly view themselves as not having

culture, and as a result see culture as irrelevant, or, conversely, envy people of color for theirs.

For example, Fitzgerald (2007) noted the term “white bread” as indicating having no ethnic

heritage. My white students often used this term in that sense. Kincheloe (1999) argued that

absence of historical memory has created a “white identity crisis” (p. 172) that, left unaddressed,

breeds anger and backlash.

English-speakers also tend to resist acquiring a second language. In 2011, a Gallup poll

found that about three-fourths of the U.S. population cannot carry on a conversation in a

language other than English, and only about 19% believe it is essential to be able to do so

(McComb, 2001). More recently, Friedman (2015) reports that only 7% of U.S. college students

are enrolled in a foreign language course, and only 1% of U.S. adults are proficient in a language

they studied in school. Resistance to bilingualism rests partially on the belief that European

ancestors (other than those from England) willingly traded their languages for English and didn’t

need or use bilingual policies.

That belief, however, runs contrary to the actual experiences of many ancestors, the

Germans being a case in point. With respect to those of us of German descent, what did our

ancestors’ lives look and feel like on a daily basis, how did German-American history become

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suppressed (Kirschbaurm, 2015), and what are the implications for people today? White Bread

(Figure 2) explores these questions.

Figure 2. White Bread: Weaving Cultural Past into the Present (Sleeter, 2015).

About one-third of the novel is set between 1870 and the conclusion of World War I; the

rest takes place in the present. My extensive data sources for the historical sections included vital

statistics, property records, and old documents. The most useful data source turned out to be

digitized newspaper articles, mainly from Decatur, Illinois, where my ancestors lived. Doing the

research, I became intrigued by questions such as: What was a typical day like? How did people

relate to each other? To other socio-cultural groups? What did it mean to be a German

immigrant, or of German descent, living in the U.S. Midwest? How did German-English

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bilingualism play out in everyday life? How did perspectives change as World War I

approached?

Initially, I assembled long lists of “facts” (Figure 3) about my ancestors’ lives that even I

found boring to read. Yet, the stories I was able to find in digitized newspapers caught my

imagination. So, I gradually began to turn my data into story as I sought to bring people to life.

Initially I hesitated to introduce interpretations, create descriptions, and imagine conversations.

Leavy (2013) points out that “Fiction-based research practice requires several things from the

researcher: creativity, attention to craft and aesthetics, reflexivity, and openness” (p. 53).

Gradually I turned my imagination loose, but simultaneously maintained a close eye on the data.

While fiction needs plot, settings, characters, and action, it also must be historically accurate. In

the process of writing stories, I found myself recognizing larger themes in people’s lives, such as

what the German-American church meant to the community.

Figure 3. A list of facts compiled by the author about her ancestors.

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I hope this novel contributes to a part of U.S. history that has been neglected. Even

though I wrote my research as story, it is grounded in extensive documentation that appears at

the end of the book. I believe that learning the history of German-Americans, including why

German culture and language have almost vanished from the U.S., and what the cost of that

amnesia has been, will contribute to my other two purposes of writing research as fiction.

Critical Family History

“I wish I knew something about these people,” Jessica continued, setting down her

sandwich. “Some of the children in my class know about their grandparents’

grandparents, not just names on a piece of paper, but what they were like. This is all I

have.”

“I bet there’s more you could find,” Esteban suggested. “Old newspapers that have

been digitized, plat maps . . .”

“What kind of maps?” Jessica asked.

“Plat maps and other land records.” He pulled a chair around and sat, the back of the

chair pressed against his chest. “We used land records a lot when I took historiography in

college.” Esteban had been a history major. “The U.S. government ignored everyone

else’s land records when they took over territory. They sent out their own surveyors to

draft townships that indicated land plots, topographical features, roads, and sometimes

who bought which plots. That’s a plat map. You may or may not find anything, but it’s

worth checking.”

I coined the term “critical family history” to challenge people to situate their family

histories in the context of colonization, racism, and other relations of power (Sleeter, 2011).

Family history as usually practiced does not do so. People generally research their family history

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for a sense of belonging and personal identity (Bottero, 2015; Kramer, 2011) rather than using it

as a window into the dynamics of race, class, culture, and gender. White people especially tend

to approach the history of their family as decontextualized from events and from other socio-

cultural groups around them. Parham (2008), for example, found White genealogists to use the

past as a backdrop on which to locate their ancestors, framed as individuals rather than members

of larger communities, within a traditional nationalist narrative; Black genealogists, in contrast,

linked their family’s story with a larger narrative of navigating and challenging racial oppression.

Teacher educators report noticing something similar when engaging their teacher

candidates in examining themselves as culturally and historically located beings. For example,

Picower (2009) described the White teacher candidates in her course as creating stories about

their own ancestors struggling and eventually succeeding, reproducing “a hegemonic story about

how people of color should be able to pick themselves up by their bootstraps” (p. 201). In other

words, these White teacher candidates understood their families’ stories as demonstrating that

hard work pays off, while ignoring privileges conferred by White supremacy as if they did not

exist.

The research methodology for critical family history includes both genealogical research

and contextual research. Genealogical data include sources such as family documents and oral

history interviews, census and other vital statistics records, religious records, military records,

digitized newspapers, land and probate records, and so forth. Contextual data come from the

range of sources historians normally use, particularly primary historical data (Figure 4). Critical

family history asks questions about context derived from the various critical theoretical

traditions. For example, critical theory prompts asking about one’s family’s location in a

capitalist economy and how that location impacted on them; it also prompts asking about their

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location in a system of White supremacy, and how they dealt with race and racism.

Figure 4. Birth records in which the author discovered her family name was Americanized from

“Schlichter.”

The protagonist of my novel, Jessica, gradually learns to employ critical family history

research tools and questions to uncover her own German-American family history. In

constructing the story, I drew from my experience learning to use various research tools to

inform Jessica’s research, her questions, and her discoveries. I also created conversations that

ensued when she talked about her research with others (such as an African American architect)

to suggest questions and perspectives that people—particularly White people—often do not

consider when researching the histories of their own families.

My intent is that teacher candidates will apply the critical family history research tools

Jessica used to their own lives. To what extent this actually happens in teacher education classes

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is beginning to be documented (Hardin, 2017; Maddaus, Silverman, & Mills, 2017; Osorio,

2017).

Envisioning Self as Change Agent

“I should write a letter to the editor, myself.”

“Saying?” Cath prodded.

Jessica studied the remains of her sandwich. “Well, maybe just saying, from a teacher’s

point of view, I can see how my kids respond when I integrate Mexican-American

literature into my classroom. What gets me is that we’re doing pretty much the same things

to immigrants now as what was done to our ancestors a century ago. But we don’t know

what happened then, so we don’t stop to think.”

“So you’re suggesting there should be a German studies program, too?”

“No, that wouldn’t be relevant here and now, although I might sign up for German

classes if they were available here. But, it was relevant in the Midwest a hundred years

ago. The thing is, it’s like there’s this big funnel,” Jessica’s hands outlined its shape, “and

this country takes all these different people, puts them through the funnel, and out comes

people like you and me.” Her hands grabbed at imaginary people, tossing them into the

imaginary funnel. “People who think the English are our real ancestors, but couldn’t tell

you who they are beyond something like, ‘Oh, I’m a sports fan. White bread, Wonder

Bread no less.’”

“So you’re going to write about Wonder Bread?”

“Something like that. I’m not sure.”

The two sat silently with their thoughts, then Jessica announced, “That’s what I’ll do,

I’ll write a letter to the editor about, something about this funnel, or whatever, that erased

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my history, erased a lot of other people’s histories. And here we are at it again, no

memory. What do you think?”

Fiction has the power to immerse students into another world in order to understand it. As

Leavy (2013) noted:

Fiction can draw us in, giving us access to new yet familiar worlds in which we might

meet strangers or through which we might reflect on our own lives. Through the pleasure,

and at times the pain, of confronting emotionally-charged truths, the process of reading

fiction can be transformative, as is the process of writing it. (p. 20)

Because of this transformative power, fiction is used fairly widely as a teaching tool. For

example, Burrows and Morrissey (2015), seeking to broaden perspectives of elementary students

in a predominantly white school, created a project in which students selected and read a book

with a focus different from their own life experiences, then held a series discussions based on it.

Fiction is commonly used in teacher education courses to explore the lives of people from

diverse cultural backgrounds (e.g., Mills, 1997; Smith & Singer, 2006). As Smith and Singer

(2006) put it, “using literature with diverse perspectives can enable White preservice students to

recognize and enter into the experiences of different others” (p. 323).

Fiction is used far less to prompt students—particularly those who are or wish to become

teachers—to envision themselves as agents of social change. For the most part, fiction does not

portray teachers as change agents. Niemi, Smith and Brown (2014) studied the portrayal of

teachers in 74 children’s fiction books, finding them portrayed overwhelmingly as White women

who teach mainly because they love children. Teachers report to male principals who control

their work; teachers do not challenge the system. Cummins (2011) analyzed the portrayal of

teachers in five realistic young adult novels, finding a common binary of good/bad teacher, with

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the good teacher using more constructivist pedagogy than the bad teacher. In adult novels, it is

hard to find even that must. Most novels with teacher protagonists are set in the past, in private

and/or elite schools, and/or in England, and rarely does one see the teacher working with

students.

Yet, I believe social fiction has the potential to enable teachers, or those preparing to

become teachers, to envision themselves becoming good teachers of diverse students, and social

justice activists. Social fiction itself is greatly underutilized. Mohammed Yunus (2013), in an

address to the Skoll World Forum, points out that while science fiction has a robust history of

prompting technological change, we have so little social fiction that social problems go

unaddressed. He said: “If we imagine today the kind of world we want, then that’s the kind of

world we create.” Change will happen “when we create social fiction like we create science

fiction.”

My novel attempts to engage readers vicariously in a White teacher’s struggle to

understand her Mexican-American bilingual, bicultural students, while simultaneously beginning

to identify with her own bilingual/bicultural ancestors. How did her teaching shift as she learned

to listen to her students, for example? In several scenes, readers vicariously experience her

perplexity as it gives way to insights when something she tries (such as using Mexican-American

children’s literature) actually works. How did she connect her ancestors’ struggles with those

immigrant families experience today?

I also wanted readers to experience a transition between the indifference of a White

teacher toward a multicultural and ethnic studies curriculum, and becoming an ally to the

teachers of color working to instantiate such a curriculum. Brooker-Gross (1991) argued that

novels serve as a highly motivating tool for engaging university students with complexities of

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race and racism. How might a White person shift from indifference to activism for racial justice?

I sought to bring readers along with Jessica through a multiplicity of experiences that prompt her

to grow. These experiences include: meaningful interactions with Mexican American parents

during Open House, a temporary crush on a Mexican American activist teacher colleague,

growing recognition of sexism in her personal life, embarking on a home visit, doing political

volunteer work, and drawing connections between what her ancestors lost and what her students’

families may be on the cusp of losing (or gaining). Ultimately, she decides to engage in activism

beyond the classroom as her awareness deepens.

Conclusion

Writing in the Huffington Post about the transformative power of art, Martin (2011)

observed:

Our society is growing and maturing at an exponential rate, yet in our growth we are

more individually oriented than ever before. Our challenge remains to communicate

effectively within an ever-widening community—with needs and values as diverse as the

individuals—to bring about systemic social change . . . Art is a powerful tool for making

complex ideas simple and facilitating easy, non-verbal communication around abstract

ideas . . . Recognizing art as a valid communication tool for adults can help galvanize

meaningful discussion about the ideas and values that shape our lives.

Elsewhere, I discuss the transformative potential of education research when connected with

action on the ground and enlightened policy-makers (Sleeter, 2016). Missing from that

conceptualization is the power of the arts to ignite social imagination and action. It is because of

that power that I have broadened my writing to take up fiction, a genre that “has the potential to

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invite people with disparate views into the fictional world and imagine what it might be like to

be any of the characters in that situation” (Leavy, 2013, p. 30).

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Author Bio: Christine E. Sleeter, Ph.D. is Professor Emerita in the College of Professional

Studies at California State University Monterey Bay, where she was a founding faculty member.

She has served as a visiting professor at several universities, most recently the University of

Colorado at Boulder. She has published over 100 articles and 20 books, including Un-

Standardizing Curriculum (with J. Flores Carmona, Teachers College Press) and her first novel

White Bread (SensePublishers).