#19. Talking about 9/11 in the Composition Classroom

Okay, so this is the second post where I have reneged on my promise to talk more about Composition & Resistance, however, as one can tell by the title of this post, I have been sidetracked by a more timely event. Expect my musings on Composition & Resistance next time. 

My mother's side of the family is from New York, and during my childhood we spent most of our summers in Southold, Long Island. In August of the year 2000, my parents took my sister and I into the city and we went to the observation deck located at the top of the South Tower. I was nine years old and thus my memory of the experience is fleeting, however I distinctly remember two things: 1) I was afraid of how high up we were, and for this reason I avoided standing too close to the windowpanes where you could look out at the rest of Manhattan. 2) I also remember being intrigued that there was a Sbarro pizza restaurant within the observation deck space. The past feels like a dream, and while it is hard for me to remember my mindset at the time, I imagine that visiting the World Trade Center was just something fun for my family to do that day. My summer vacation continued, and I mostly forgot about the experience until what happened thirteen months later. Having just started 5th grade, I remember waking up in the morning and going into my parent's room, where my father usually had the TV on to watch the morning news. The terrorist attack had already begun, and like many Americans that day I remember watching both buildings collapse in real time. I remember feeling a special connection with the buildings, as most of the kids at my school didn't have the opportunity to travel to New York.  

Countless retrospectives have been offered about the impact of the event and how it irreversibly changed the American psyche. Many say it was the end of Francis Fukuyama's notion of the end of history. Some cultural works about 9/11 that I particularly enjoy include Spike Lee's film 25th Hour and Ottessa Moshfegh's novel My Year of Rest and Relaxation. The event also gave us Toby Keith's jingoistic song "Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue," as well as the most controversial moment in Ta-Nehisi Coates' book Between the World and Me. Another perspective that resonated with me was from podcaster Adam Friedland, who said recently on his show that the event made America sad. I grew up in the Inland Empire in Southern California and Halloween was quite the event for my provincial suburban neighborhood, where there would always be droves of people out trick or treating. I remember for the Halloween that came right after 9/11, the neighborhood was quiet and there was barely anyone out. Fear seemed to have won. What then followed were the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, eschatological media like the film Bruce Almighty, and the eventual slide into the ongoing shattering of the established neoliberal order.  

My copy of the September 11th issue of The New York Times.

My pontificating here isn't adding much to the larger analysis of 9/11 as a generation-defining moment. However, one thing I have confronted in recent years as a Millennial writing instructor is that the event is now older than traditionally-aged college students. As a result I think it is important to start conversations with students about this impactful piece of history, even if only briefly, as younger people might not fully be able to appreciate the incident's cultural significance and how it has shaped the current moment. I thus have three practical ideas for engaging students on the topic of 9/11 in the writing classroom. I will acknowledge that as someone who strongly prefers a "writing about writing" approach to writing instruction, I have struggled to justify how talking about this historical event fits in with the rest of my curriculum. At the same time, since I personally find 9/11 to be of great historical and cultural interest, I think it is perhaps okay to indulge myself for this one day during the academic term. 

Idea #1: Sharing One's Lived Experience

This first idea is pretty simple and I am sure people already do this, but one might start the class by talking briefly about their lived experience during 9/11. How did you experience the event? What is your perception of how the event changed America? 

Idea #2: Bringing an Artifact to Class

I went on eBay and bought a copy of the original September 11th issue of The New York Times, which is pictured above. I bring this artifact to class and allow students to leaf through it. As an historical document, the various articles included in the paper not only give the reader a good sense of the shock and uncertainty experienced during that fateful day, but also offer an idea of the way that people in the olden days used to experience analog media. 

Idea #3: Interviewing an Older Person

I have never tried this assignment in my own class, but feel that it would work well as a way to get students to practice their writing and interpersonal skills. You could require students to go out and interview an older person who remembers the events, and then have them submit a write-up of the interview. 

That's all I have for today, until next time!