On Identity Texts and Identity Petals
(I realized while writing that before I can start sharing lessons, there are a couple of concepts that need a proper introduction. This week I’m introducing identity texts and identity petals so that in the next post I can dive into #10 of The Best Lessons I’ve Ever Taught.)
For me, the best part of being a high school educator was witnessing young people gain confidence. When that confidence caused them to see themselves in a more positive light, they began to speak boldly. Their voices held more bass. I remember having students go from being too shy to present in front of their class of 15, to delivering keynote addresses to audiences of university faculty. And don’t get me wrong, speaking in front of professors isn’t the only valuable way to demonstrate confidence. Gaining a strong sense of self looked differently in each student.
(I had a student who wouldn’t speak at all during class – in English or in Spanish. This student was silent during partner conversations and class discussions. At the end of the year, I assigned a summative assessment that included a presentation. The student put presentation slides together and asked a friend to stand next to her and do the speaking. I was proud of the way that she allowed her voice to be heard through a classmate.)
Even though identity exploration happens organically during our pre-teen and teenage years, as a youth educator, I liked supporting the process through identity text work.
There are three things that are important to know about identity texts1 in a classroom setting. The first is that they are created multimodally. That is, they can be made using more than one form of expression. Identity texts can be “spoken, written, signed, visual, musical, dramatic, or combinations in multimodal form2.” Secondly, identity texts reflect the presenter in a positive light. This is especially important for young people of color who oftentimes find themselves surrounded by tropes about who they are and where they come from. Identity text exchange can give the presenter a platform to set the record straight, or to create a new narrative entirely. Finally, identity texts are meant to be shared. The sharing aspect of these activities is just as important as the creation of the texts itself. There is something very powerful that takes place psychologically when we not only decide who we are, but make the choice to declare it to others.
Identity development is a social process that causes us to look to our families, our peers, and our local communities to reflect who we are back to us. But when the reflection we are shown doesn’t align with the image we have of ourselves, this exchange becomes complicated. People with more marginalized identities – including Black, Indigenous, Latinx, and other people of color – tend to be more aware of this disconnect than others. Poet and educator Audre Lorde explained why grappling with identity mattered so much to her:
“As a Black woman, I have to deal with identity or I don't exist at all. I can't depend on the world to name me kindly, because it never will. If the world defines you, it will define you to your disadvantage. So either I'm going to be defined by myself or not at all3.”
Before we can commit to self-definition the way that Lorde describes, we need to grapple with the following two questions:
Who am I?
What do I want to say about myself?
The identity text work that I facilitated with high school youth supported them in crafting statements that matched how they saw themselves. The activities then prompted students to share those statements with different audiences. I felt that was the most impactful part of this work. Instead of letting society dictate the narratives that would define the young people that I worked with, identity texts gave youth the opportunity to craft and manipulate the tools of representation themselves4.
Identity texts prompt students to ask big questions. Take a look at what Wallerstein and Auerbach say about what identity text questions ask:
Try something for me. Choose one of the above questions and consider how you would respond if speaking to:
a) Two of your closest friends
b) A group of 10 work colleagues
What would you choose to share? What would you choose to keep private? How would your response differ for each audience? Why?
I can imagine that your response to the “why” relates in some way to vulnerability, even if that’s not the exact word that came to mind. That’s because sharing personal information, like answers related to the above questions, increases our susceptibility of being hurt by others.
Though I wanted to reap the benefits that identity text work can have for individual students and the classroom community as a whole, it was important to me that students’ level of vulnerability wasn’t forced. To ensure that students were able to opt to share only as much as they were comfortable to, I made sure they knew the stakes of any identity text activity up front. (I also participated in all identity text activities myself to get a good sense of how it felt to do what I was assigning.) Students needed to know exactly what they were being asked to do and all of the options for participation. For example, would they be presenting? Would it be just in small groups? In front of the whole class? Making sure that students had this information at the beginning of the project helped them to decide how much or how little they wanted to share.
There is sometimes a misconception that students have to share something deeply personal for their work to qualify as an identity text. This is not true. I’ve had students share anything from how much they love soccer to the most difficult personal struggles they’ve had to overcome as teens. Both of these examples, and everything in between, are valid and acceptable ways to engage in this work.
What is true, however, is that sometimes students choose to share personal details about their lives. And being that there is no barometer to indicate how personal the information that students share is, it is our responsibility as facilitators to handle students’ identity texts with care and to foster a classroom environment that is respectful of the process.
I’ve started to refer to the realities that students share when presenting identity text work as identity petals. Identity petals are delicate, fragile, and deserving of special protection. As facilitators, it is our responsibility to ensure that each identity petal is protected and preserved with as much care and intention as we would a petal of an actual flower that we held in our hands.
Identity text work is, in fact, work. It takes reflection, introspection, and the courage to share on behalf of both students and teachers. As it is with most things that require hard work, the rewards are multiple. Creating and sharing identity texts fosters healthy identity development in which youth claim and reclaim the stories about who they are meant to be. Through identity texts, young people do everything from teaching one another about the life lessons they have encountered and overcome, to demonstrating the beauty in the more mundane aspects of life. Identity text work, when done with respect, creates opportunities for students to validate one another’s lived experiences. Each individual’s story can help to strengthen classroom community, making identity text work a strong mortar for the rest of the curriculum.
I’m using the term text here somewhat different than what is typical. Oftentimes, when we use the term text we are referring to the written word. When it comes to identity texts, I’m using texts to mean the written word AND any symbol, movement, action, or phenomenon that can be interpreted. Because identity texts can be created multimodally, a text can be spoken, written, signed, visual, musical, dramatic, etc. products shared by the presenter to be interpreted by their audience.
[1]Cummins, J., & Early, M. (2010). Identity Texts: The Collaborative Creation of Power in Multilingual Schools. Staffordshire, UK: Trentham Books Ltd.
Alexander, E. (1994) Coming out Blackened and Whole: Fragmentation and
Reintegration in Audre Lorde's Zami and The Cancer Journals. American
Literary History 6 (4), 695- 715.
Hernandez, J., (2020). Aesthetics of excess: The art and politics of Black and Latina
Embodiment. Duke University Press.