A Place for Us

Bechtel Prize Judge Chen Chen selected Kristen Moraine’s essay “A Place for Us: Student Poetry that Looks Back to Move Forward” as the 2025 Bechtel Prize winner. The Bechtel Prize is awarded for an essay describing a creative writing teaching experience, project, or activity that demonstrates innovation in creative writing instruction.

Of Moraine’s essay, Chen shared: “How can we, as teachers and students, remain hopeful as fascist movements again overtake governments and everyday life? This deeply moving essay examines—and illuminates—teaching poetry as a practice in hope-making. At the core is a class discussion around Alice Walker’s stunning poem “Women.” The prose here beautifully blends narrative reporting from the classroom and critical reflection on both pedagogy and politics. Anti-nostalgic, this piece proposes a more capacious relationship to the past, and a nimble stepping toward as strange a thing as the future, a shared one. This work manages to be timely without being narrow in its focus. Perhaps history-minded is a better way to describe this essay’s powers—history-minded and dream-oriented. It asks of us a better question than what I started with; it asks, how can we, as teachers and students, create hope out of reading, writing, and being in community?”

The Bechtel Prize is named for Louise Seaman Bechtel, who was an editor, author, collector of children’s books, and teacher. She was the first person to head a juvenile book department at an American publishing house. As such, she took children’s literature seriously, helped establish the field, and was a tireless advocate for the importance of literature in the lives of young people. This award honors her legacy. Learn more about the Bechtel Prize here.

It’s difficult to use the words “hope” and “gratitude” in the classroom these days without feeling a rose-tinted blush. Our social and political trials seem to be mounting ever upward rather than evening out, and my students, many of them just shy of voting age, are furious with laws and practices that strike them as antiquated and outrageous. I don’t always know what to say to my students after a disappointing headline comes across our news feeds. “It’ll get better” rings hollow, and “we’ve been here before” doesn’t offer much comfort to anyone. In moments like these, I lean on the wisdom of literary giants like Alice Walker. I’m lucky that for most of my career I’ve worked in a school that didn’t question The Color Purple as a core text, so Walker’s work has always been part of my curriculum. But lately, Walker’s books have been banned from schools in our country, which means an essential American voice is missing from many American classrooms. How can we possibly overcome our present and future obstacles without the wisdom of the thinkers and writers who came before us? Writers like Alice Walker gave us a lamp to guide our path forward, and we are fools to put it down. At least there is always light in poetry, and last time I checked, Alice Walker’s poem “Women” wasn’t banned anywhere. I teach it every year.  

How can we possibly overcome our present and future obstacles without the wisdom of the thinkers and writers who came before us?

“Women” and the creative writing prompt I pair with it would work well in a larger unit on The Black Arts Movement, but I often teach it on its own. I think of it as a “break glass in case of emergency” sort of activity that I turn to when my students need it most. 

Today is that day. The news outside the classroom is awful, and the previous unit on Shakespeare’s Hamlet has left us in a daze. After too much talk of Ophelia, I want my students to hear from a strong woman describing other strong women. I pull Alice Walker’s “Women” from my drawer.

Women
By Alice Walker

They were women then
My mama’s generation
Husky of voice—stout of
Step
With fists as well as
Hands
How they battered down
Doors
And ironed
Starched white
Shirts
How they led
Armies
Headragged generals
Across mined
Fields
Booby-trapped
Ditches
To discover books
Desks
A place for us
How they knew what we
Must know
Without knowing a page
Of it
Themselves.

I begin by asking a student to read the poem aloud for us.

“I got this.” A student in the front row raises her hand. “It’s short.” 

We listen to her read, her voice clunking a little across the line breaks at first, then picking up speed as she races to the bottom of the poem. When she finishes and looks up, I ask how reading the poem felt to her. 

“Weird,” she says. “I didn’t know where to stop or pause—or if I should. It just kept going.” 

I ask the class why Walker uses free verse and multiple enjambed lines with no punctuation in one long stanza. Why did Walker maybe want the reading to feel this way—like a march with unpredictable steps and stops?

“Because she’s talking about a battle,” a student in the back says. “It can’t be smooth or predictable like a poem with rhyme.”

From there we’re off. I ask the students to work with partners to discuss the nature of the “battle” and how Walker characterizes her mother’s generation with metaphor and imagery. I tell them to circle what they see and hear clearly. After we discuss the most powerful images for a few minutes—the women as “husky of voice” and “stout of step” with “fists as well as hands”––a student speaks up. 

“Walker makes them sound like men,” she says. “Usually it would have been men that get these descriptions, and men who go to battle, but here the women have ‘masculine’ traits.”

“But why does she say that they have ‘fists as well as hands’?” someone asks. “Fists are hands. I don’t get that.”

“Maybe the fists are for fighting and the hands are for the softer work that women do—like taking care of babies,” another says. “Women do both.” 

At this point, I just need to get out of the way as the students discuss how fierce and capable these women were. Occasionally I pose a question about technique—Walker doesn’t use rhyme or meter, but how does she play with sound in the poem and draw our ears to a line or image? We spend some time talking about alliteration—the women are “battering down doors” and leading armies across “booby-trapped ditches to discover books.”

“And there is the one time she uses italics,” a student says. “‘How they knew what we must know, without knowing a page of it themselves.’ That emphasis on must.”

We chew on this closing line and the word must for a while. The women Walker praises in this poem weren’t educated, yet they knew their children, their daughters especially, must read and have access to education in order to have a chance at a better life and “a place” in the world. This was the battle. Walker’s mother and her generation of Black women fought against impossible odds to create opportunity for their children in a deeply racist and sexist society. I explain that Walker’s mother was a sharecropper and seamstress who worked so that her daughter could go to school and become . . . well, Alice Walker. 

There is some awkward shuffling in the room then, as there always is when the conversation moves toward touchy topics like gender, race, and identity. But I let the silence hang in the room. I wait.

“When she said ‘they were women then,’” one student asks, “is she implying that women aren’t the same anymore? That women now aren’t really women in the same way? I mean the women she describes were so strong. Does Walker think women now are weak?”

“What makes a woman strong now?” I ask. 

This causes a bit of a stir, but I go on. “Or a man? Or a person who doesn’t identify as either a woman or a man? What do we value now as a society, and do those traits get associated with some identities more than others?”

There is some awkward shuffling in the room then, as there always is when the conversation moves toward touchy topics like gender, race, and identity. But I let the silence hang in the room. I wait.  

“Guys aren’t supposed to show emotion, and they need to make money or be an athlete or something,” a student says without looking up from a spot on his desk. 

“And if a woman is strong and successful in business, she’s probably called a bitch or a ballbuster.” This student raises her eyebrows at me to see if she’s in trouble for her language. I nod; she has a point. 

“And if you don’t fit . . . if you’re not clearly one or the other, you’re screwed,” another student says. “And if you’re a person of color on top of it . . . forget it.” She flicks her hand, rolls her eyes.   

“Well, maybe not forget it,” I say. “Remember Alice Walker is a gay woman of color, and she’s a Pulitzer prize winning author and activist.”

“Who’s getting banned,” the student says, arms crossed.

“So there are still more battles to wage,” I say. “Walker turns some of the usual gender stereotypes on their heads here to show what true strength is. She calls attention to where the real battles are and what it takes to fight them. Maybe that’s something we’re meant to do every generation.” 

“[Walker] calls attention to where the real battles are and what it takes to fight them. Maybe that’s something we’re meant to do every generation.” 

We go back and forth a little while longer—there is so much more to discuss with this poem—but then it’s time to write. When I ask them to take out their notebooks, I hear some groans; they think I’m going to make them write a poetry analysis. Not today. 

I begin by telling them to write a list of words and phrases to describe their parents’ generation. They can focus on a specific parent, grandparent, or guardian, as Walker does with her mother, or they can describe the generation as a whole. What words and images come to mind? What sounds? 

After a few minutes, I ask students to look at their lists and circle the three or four words or phrases that stand out as strong—maybe they are the best descriptors or they evoke some emotion. Then I have them share their circled words with partners. There are a few moments of “oh yeah . . . for sure . . . my mom, too.”  Or “my dad’s not like that at all . . . but my grandpa. . . .” The point here is just to get the students talking and thinking about the adults in their lives . . . these people that they live with and interact with every day but perhaps don’t always understand. The room is full of lively chatter for a while, the students interested in hearing where there is crossover with their lists. What might be a true generational tell? And what is an individual trait or idiosyncrasy unique to their parents?  

Next I ask the students to look at Walker’s opening line. Then I write on the board: “They were __________ then.” I tell them to begin their own poems with this opener, but fill in the blank with a word that describes the generation they are writing about. The word might already be on the list in front of them, or it might be something new. After that, they should keep writing for 10 minutes without stopping. They don’t need to worry about “crafting” or obsessing over their words at this point—just keep the pencils moving. I give a few other pointers: incorporate the words and phrases on that list when it works, but of course add anything new that comes to mind. The poem might sound like a praise poem—like Walker’s for her mother’s generation—or it might be more of a rant about frustrations with the previous generation. The poems are free verse, so no meter or rhyme scheme required, but they should lean on imagery and sound devices like alliteration and repetition. What do they want their readers to really see and hear that will call to mind the generation they describe? 

I start the timer for 10 minutes. 

I’ve used this activity for many years and with students experiencing a wide variety of cultural shifts and movements. What always strikes me about the poems students produce from this activity is the love and admiration I hear for their parents. I remember being nervous the first time I assigned this prompt, as I had just given teenagers permission to rant openly (albeit poetically) about their parents. Few of them do. I don’t know if it’s the magic of Alice Walker’s poem about her own mother that does the trick, or if it’s the fact that many of my students are seniors in high school, close to leaving their homes. Perhaps reflecting on their parents as real human beings responding to the world around them as best as they can inspires some rare teenage gratitude. Whatever the reason, I’ve seen some lovely poems over the years. 

This particular class is no exception. When writing time is up, I tell the students to read what they have and underline the lines they like best. I invite them to share with small groups around them, and I give them the option to read only a line or two, or the whole poem. 

As I circle the room, I hear a student read, “They were courageous then, my parents,” before he explains his parents’ harrowing journey from El Salvador to the U.S. 

Another student starts with, “He was taller then, my father,” then he describes the back-breaking work his father did for years to support his family. 

One student says of her mother, “She was fierce then, and she still slays now.” In the poem, the mom’s high heels click with purpose across the linoleum floor of the grocery store. She’s charging for the deli meat aisle so she can prep her kids’ lunches before a work meeting. This student later told me that when she shared her poem with her mom, they both cried, then her mom asked her to read the poem at an event celebrating International Women’s Day. My student stood at a podium in front of a packed room and read Alice Walker’s poem “Women,” followed by her own poem for her mom. I can’t imagine a more hopeful image: a teenage voice joining Alice Walker’s to celebrate the strength of so many generations of women.

Still not all the poems from this exercise are positive and heart-warming—nor should they be. Some of the most powerful poems are about how a generation has fallen short, ideals that were presented and then abandoned by exhausted, distracted, conflicted people. Many are about the work that previous generations have left to their children—an inheritance they never wanted. I’ve read poems about social justice failings, systemic oppression, and damaging social constructs. I remember one that began, “They were careless then. They are willfully ignorant now.” This poem wasn’t about the students parents’ specifically, but about every generation that has contributed to the climate crisis. 

The wisdom of the past is clearest when it rides alongside the fervent calls of the younger generation, hungry for change.

This is when the next step in the exercise becomes even more critical. I ask students to start a second poem that will be a follow-up to the first. This poem will be about the students’ generation. I take them through the same initial steps as the first poem: make a list of traits, images, sounds, etc. Then I write on the board: “They say we are ___________.”

I ask them to fill in the blank, then write for 10 minutes about who they are as a generation. How do others see them, and how do they see themselves? The group sharing and discussion of these poems is always enthusiastic because what generation does not feel misunderstood somehow?  

I like these poems because they give students a chance to think critically about what came before them and what it all means now. I’ve found that teenagers are paying a lot more attention to their parents and the other adults in their lives than they get credit for. And no, it’s not all sarcasm and teenage angst. Most of them share messages that are empathetic, loving, and yes, at times deeply concerned about and critical of the world they live in. But what writing like this can do is make students consider their place in society, much like Alice Walker does in “Women.” Which battles brought us to this place, and who should we thank for the progress we’ve made? Even more important, how far do we still need to go, and how can we lift up the generations that will come after us? There is no simple solution to many of the social issues my students highlight in their poetry year after year, but reading as much as possible from those who came before us will certainly help. The lessons we learn from writers like Alice Walker carry us closer to the solutions we need as an educated and just society. Still, the wisdom of the past is clearest when it rides alongside the fervent calls of the younger generation, hungry for change. These are the stories and voices we must know if we are to turn the next hopeful page.

Featured photo by Harun.