(trans. Sheila Maldonado)<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\nOnce we are done reading, I start asking some questions to help students think more deeply about the poem. I ask, where do you think the poet is? Do you think she’s comfortable where she is; is she happy? When students reply in the negative, I ask what makes them say so. What does the poet say to give us the sense that she is not happy or comfortable? I direct their attention to the fact that she talks about rages, and about jail, but then also makes it a point to say that she was never in jail. Then what is it that makes her feel as if she is? We make note of some of the phrases\u2014’scream from shame’, ‘destroy the armor’, ‘I disguise myself’\u2014that help the reader understand that the poet is in a place that feels somehow oppressive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We notice together that the poem begins with descriptions\u2014’1.5 meters tall, eyes brown’\u2014that sound like they belong in some kind of official document. I ask the students, what does that read like? They say: passports, or licenses; the kind of documents that identify you. Then I redirect their attention to the title\u2014Personal Records. By now we understand that the poet is writing from some kind of documentation\u2014perhaps an ID card that she has to present at checkpoints, as was common in Central America for a long time and still is to some degree. This part of the poem gives us descriptions of the poet that seem somehow cold and impersonal, but soon she transitions to something more interior\u2014’at night what I’ve said hurts’, ‘In dreams I disguise myself.’ We note that there is a lot of concealment that seems to be happening within the poem, and that helps us transition into a larger conversation about what it is like to live in an oppressive society. I give some background on the dictatorship in Nicaragua that Alegr\u00eda\u2019s family had to escape, and how she lived to see its revolutionary period as well. After we have discussed the poem for some time\u2014usually around twenty minutes\u2014I transition to the second part of the lesson, which involves giving students a model that they can emulate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When I began as a teaching artist 20 years ago with the Poetry Outreach program at The City College of New York, I was introduced to this part of the lesson. I came across these student poems in CCNY\u2019s Poetry in Performance<\/em> anthology in 2002. Later I found the poem by Claribel Alegr\u00eda, and thought that it complemented the student poems perfectly. Here is the first student poem of the two I teach as part of this lesson at the college-level:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
\nMY SELF-PORTRAIT<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nI’m 12 years old
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MY SECRET SELF-PORTRAIT<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nI feel so trapped inside,Yordenis, 6th grade<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\nImmediately we can see that this poem is, in a way, a more broken-down version of Alegr\u00eda’s poem\u2014here, the exterior and interior descriptions are in their own separate categories. We read the first part of the poem, and notice that, like Alegr\u00eda’s poem, Alvarez begins with numbers\u201412 years old, 5 foot 3, 90 pounds, sixth grade. This part of the poem reads like a kind of record. There’s some personal detail in this section, but for the most part, the description is external and somewhat superficial, like how you might describe yourself to a stranger. Then we move on to the ‘secret self-portrait’, and now it is obvious that we are hearing about the more personal details that one is usually reluctant to share. We note that the poet feels ‘trapped’, although we don’t know why. We see that she uses a little simile to describe herself\u2014’wild like a lion and sweet as a butterfly’. Students begin to realize that, to put it in the simplest terms, the ‘self-portrait’ is external while the ‘secret self-portrait’ is more internal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We then read the second of the student poems:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nMY SELF-PORTRAIT<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n I have black hair that
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MY SECRET SELF-PORTRAIT<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nI am Arabic.Nisreen<\/em>, 6th grade<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\nOne of the first things we note together is how being Arabic is part of this poet’s secret self-portrait. I ask the students why they think this is, and we discuss possible reasons: perhaps she feels separate from other people around her, or perhaps she’s mocked for being different. Where is she, that she would feel the need to hide her identity? Why is she without her family? The students take guesses: maybe her family is in another country, and she has had to be separated from them. We look at the final lines about the sister\u2014some students wonder if the sister is dead, or if she is simply far away. We notice together how intimate and somehow beautiful these final lines are, with the author sharing some of her thoughts and withholding others. I tell students that they can do the same: reveal some part of themselves, without feeling like they have to reveal everything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I then show them my own version of this prompt, which appeared in my first book one-bedroom solo<\/em>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n\nMY SELF-PORTRAIT<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nI’m 29 years old
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MY SECRET SELF-PORTRAIT<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nMy skin is my secret weapon.
I point out that this writer\u2014it’s helpful to treat myself as just another writer in the classroom\u2014used this format to focus on the things they secretly believe, more even than their fears and dreams. This helps to illustrate to the students that they can approach this form in many ways\u2014I even tell them to feel free to borrow from any of the examples I’ve shared to get started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I give them about five minutes for the ‘self-portrait’ part of the poem, and then we break and turn our focus to the ‘secret self-portrait’\u2014I ask them, what are you afraid of? What do you like deeply? What do you believe in? After the students are done writing, some volunteer to share their poems, or the parts of their poems that they are comfortable sharing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the reasons I think this lesson is so successful is because the form\u2014divided cleanly into two parts\u2014provides something of a neat container for the students’ emotions. It helps them feel like they can open up in their writing without feeling as if they need to expose everything about themselves at once\u2014too much pressure to reveal can often lead to students feeling uncomfortable or even violated, and a form like this can help prevent that and create a more supportive classroom experience. I think students see that this is a form which gives them the space for a little bit of confession but protects them from feeling too exposed. It allows them to conceal as they reveal. They learn to be specific yet create mystery and engage emotion, the many ways of poetry. Young writers often want someone to give them direction without making them feel constrained, and a template like this can strike that balance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When I’m teaching this lesson to younger students, I sometimes leave out the Claribel Alegr\u00eda poem and instead approach the lesson almost like an assignment. I ask them to give me five descriptions of themselves from the outside: What color are their eyes? How long is their hair? Do they wear glasses? Then for the ‘secret self-portrait’, I tell them that they can try making a list of five things they fear, or five things they dreamed about recently. Through those questions students can slowly arrive at the truths about themselves that they had so far been unwilling to share, and together find the courage to put them in writing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Here are some poems that my students have written over the years, and they might serve as useful models for your students too. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This first example was written by a student in my community college creative writing class in the first few months of the Trump administration. She was pulled off a bus in the Bronx by ICE and detained for about a day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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\nMY SELF-PORTRAIT<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I am twenty years old,
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MY SECRET SELF-PORTRAIT<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I am big as my hopes and dreams.Seidy D.<\/em> (Borough of Manhattan Community College)<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\nThis self-portrait \/ secret self-portrait was written by a student in a college classroom that I visited and taught in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, my family\u2019s homeland, almost a decade ago. Read below and watch him read it here:<\/p>\n\n\n\n