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Supplementary materials for teaching Issue 26 are listed below.
To accompany our portfolio of work from the farmworker community
Students who want to dive deeper into Helena María Viramontes’s “The Fields of 1936” can read this TC interview between her and Manuel Muñoz on writing about the lives of farmworkers.
To accompany Julio Puente García’s fiction piece “Jacinta Murrieta,” translated by Jennifer Acker, students can read about the real-life folk hero Joaquín Murrieta. This article by Adam Janos (History.com) delves into the real history and folklore that surrounded the mysterious bandit.
If students want to keep reading stories like Leo Ríos’s “Lencho,” they should see Ríos’s “Now or Never,” published in The Masters Review, another story about young Latinos growing up in California.
After reading Amanda Mei Kim’s “California Obscura,” students can explore more biographical nonfiction from Kim on her Californian childhood in “Living That Van Life, Before It Was a Hashtag,” published in LitHub.
To learn more about Nora Rodriguez Camagna, author of “The Boysenberry Girls,” one can read this interview published by Stories on Stage Sacramento, in which the author discusses identity, immigration, and her upbringing.
After reading the Issue 26 poems by Allison Adelle Hedge Coke, students can keep exploring her work by reading “America, I sing you back,” (PBS) a reflection on the U.S. in the weeks after the 2016 election, or “The Change,” a longer-form poem on the realities of farmwork.
Those interested in Julián David Bañuelos’s experiments with poetic form and structure may enjoy his “Anti-Sonnet” (Eunoia Review), “Little Infinite Poem” and “Cemeteries” (Occulum), and “a prayer said (too much)” (Olney Magazine). They can also browse all of Bañuelos’s work on his website.
To accompany Narsiso Martinez’s USA Portraits, students can read this New York Times article profiling him and his artwork. They can view more of his work on his gallery page or his Instagram.
And, of course, one can explore online-only farmworker portfolio content by viewing the Farmworker tag on our website. The online portfolio includes an interview with U.S. Poet Laureate emeritus Juan Felipe Herrera, this essay on immigrating to the U.S. in the fifties, a poetry feature of selected work by poet Rodney Gomez, a dispatch from a former tomato farmer in Arkansas, and this poetry feature with several contributors (including Miguel M. Morales, co-editor of the farmworker portfolio).
For further exploration, here and elsewhere (non-portfolio)
If students enjoy Joshua Burton’s “The Gardener,” they can explore more of his poetry such as “Joshua” (La Tundra), which also contains reference to his parents and Maya Angelou, and “History” (Gulf Coast Mag), written from the perspective of the poet’s mother.
After reading Rickey Laurentiis’s “Tall Lyric for Palestine,” students may be interested in “Black Gentleman” (Poetry), a poem on Black identity, or their essay “Kinds of Dark” (Poetry), on sugar, color, and poetic practice.
After reading Nayereh Doosti’s story, “The Little One,” students can read through these articles on the terms Khorasan (Open Asia) and the Pahlavi Dynasty (Iran Chamber) to gain historical context for the conversations Saeed has with his grandchildren. If students wish to read more of Nayereh’s writing, they can read her story “When I Was Thirteen” (Epiphany) or her translation of “Requiem of the Wind” by Aboutorab Khosravi (Nowruz Journal), both of which also delve into the tensions of family.
Students who want to read another of Sebastian Romero’s stories after “Transgressions” can find “The Things We Put Away,” a piece exploring the intersections of Hispanic and queer identity, in No Tokens journal. Students may also explore The Common’s LGBTQIA+ Heritage Month reading list.
If students enjoy Amar Mitra’s plot development and style in “The Substitute” (and Anish Gupta’s wonderful translation!), they should take a look at the pair’s “The Old Man of Kusumpur,” which was selected by Valeria Luiselli as a winner of the prestigious O. Henry Prize in 2022.
In Vix Gutierrez’s essay, “Don’t Step off the Path,” she refers to 1990s Russia as the “Russian Wild Nineties.” This conversation between the authors of the book It Fell Apart: Everyday life in the Soviet Union and Russia, 1985-1999 (OpenDemocracy) analyzes the changes during this time period in Russia andEurope. Additionally, Gutierrez has written another essay, “Dark Sky City,” (Subtropics) that moves and converses with the past she writes about in Issue 26.
For context behind the phrase la vita nuova in Catherine Staples’s poem “Post-Atlantic,” students can read this article from The New Republic. Additionally, if students enjoy Catherine’s writing style, they might want to read her other poems published in The Common, as well as her work in The Yale Review and the Academy of American Poets.
After reading Ned Balbo’s poem, “Why I Cannot Celebrate the Ruling Still to Come (II),” readers may explore more of his poetry published in The Common—“Stella’s Children Look Out From a Photo Faded Gold,” and “Upcycling Paumanok,” a poem that describes development, technology, and remaking in Long Island. Students can also read more about the history of Roe V. Wade in the supreme court in this article (Planned Parenthood).
If students are seeking to read more of Virginia Konchan’s poetry, they should explore “Finis” from Issue 21 and “Homiletic” from Issue 17. She also appears in this interview from jmww about Marbles on the Floor: How to Assemble a Book of Poems, the book she co-edited with Sarah Giragosian on the material construction of a poetry collection.
For more context behind the setting in Lawrence Joseph’s poem, “O They Are Used to It,” students can read more about the history behind the Cathedral of The Holy Armed Forces here (The Guardian). Lawrence also wrote about democracy and on the sticky ties between international conflict in his Issue 10 poem, “In that City, In Those Circles.”
If students love David Lehman’s poems, they may read his most recent previous poems in The Common in the April 2023 Poetry Feature, as well as his many poems published in TC over the years. David also discusses his book, New and Selected Poems, (Scribner) a gathering of stunning new poems and modern French translations in this great interview with S. Tremaine Nelson.
To understand more about the Donbas war in “When a Missile Finds a Home,” students should take a look at this article by CrisisGroup. Additionally, if students are interested in reading more of Oksana Maksymchuk’s poetry in The Common, she has published “In the Wake of Disaster” and “The Home Makers” during the past few years.
To accompany Jonathan Moody’s Issue 26 poems, “Guinea Pig Suite” and “Bruh,” students might explore his interview with Melody Nixon on poetry activism, politics, Houston skyscrapers, or some of his other poems: “Dear 2Pac” in Issue 08 of The Common, and “Portrait of Hermes as a B-Boy,” “Kleosphobia,” and “Paranoid” online.
For students interested in Jennifer Franklin or her Issue 26 poem, “Mainland Regional High School, 1987,” they can hear Jennifer talk about her family, her work with the myth of Antigone, and her most recent collection If Some God Shakes Your House in an interview with Jessica Jacobs online at the Poetry Society of America. ”
For more information on the struldbruggs in R. Zamora Linmark’s, “The Struldbruggs,” read this explanation in WordSense, and take a look at this review on “Guilliver’s Travels” (We Need to Talk About Books) to contextualize the fictional space where the struldbruggs exist. Additional work by R. Zamora Linmark appears in our Filipino Heritage Month Reading List, which you can take a look at here.
To accompany Julia Lisella’s poetry piece, “The Coyotes,” students should read Olivia Kate Cerrone’s review (Merliterary) of her most recent collection of poems, Our Lively Kingdom, a finalist for the 2023 Paterson Poetry Prize and the Eric Hoffer Book Award.
If students enjoyed reading Maria Terrone’s “Double Infinity,” there is a great selection of her work in The Common left for students to read. Check out her poem “Bird Man,” and her dispatches “Epicenter” and “Cloak Room.” Students should also take a look at Susan Tacent’s review of Maria Terrone’s book, At Home in the New World.
See all of Issue 26.
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Teach Issue 26
