Borderlands: Theories and Stories - Grade 9
The work in this unit of study is built around four texts or text sets: Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis, a selection from Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera, Toni Cade Bambara’s short story “The Lesson,” and a compilation of stories written by students during the unit. The central concept for all of the work with these texts is Anzaldúa’s notion of “borderlands”—those places she describes as “physically present wherever two or more cultures edge each other, where people of different races occupy the same territory, where under, lower, middle and upper classes touch, where the space between two individuals shrinks with intimacy.”
Table of Contents
Text Audio
Writing Tasks
Title: S-1-4: The First Assignment: Retelling Persepolis
Session 1-4
Title: S-6: The Second Assignment: Writing About Satrapi’s Message
Session 6
Title: S-11: The Third Assignment: Wrapping Up the Work
Session 11
Title: S-14: The First Assignment: Retelling Borderlands/La Frontera
Session 14
Title: S-15: The Second Assignment Writing About Anzaldúa’s Arguments
Session 15
Title:S-22: Reading “The Lesson” as a Borderlands Story
Session 22
Title: S-24: Reading Persepolis as a Borderlands Story
Session 24
Title: S-36: The Final Assignment Revising a Borderlands Paper
Session 36
Charts for Discussion
Title: S-5: Persepolis: Whole-Class Retelling
Session 5
Title: S-6: Arguments We See In Persepolis
Session 6
Title: S-7: Criteria for Solid Text-Based Interpretations
Session 7
Title: S-8: Ways of Working With Sources in Text-Based Writing
Session 8
Title: S-10: During Text-Based Discussions….
Session 10
Title: S-13: Questions About “Towards a New Consciousness”
Session 13
Title:S-13: Anzaldúa’s Claims About Borderlands
Session 13
Title: S-14: Borderlands/La Frontera: Whole-Class Retelling
Session 14
Title: S-15: Arguments We See in the Anzaldúa Selection
Session 15
Title: S-20: Significant Moments in “The Lesson”
Session 20
Title: S-21: “The Lesson”: Claims and Evidence
Session 21
Title: S-22: Seeing “The Lesson” as a Borderlands Story
Session 22
Title: S-24: Seeing Persepolis as a Borderland
Session 24