Poetry and Storytelling:
Incorporating the Writings of Frank X Walker
into a Multi-genre Text Set Unit
Teacher Thematic
Essential Question
(what drives the unit)
Sample Student
Essential Questions
(sample questions for
independent student
inquiry)
Multi-Genre Text Set
that connects to
Thematic and Stylistic
Essential Questions
(teachers should select
a variety of texts to
supplement the
reading of Frank X
Walker’s poetry)
Stylistic Essential
Question
Socratic Seminar
(see supporting
documents on past
residency pages, if
necessary)
Analytical Writing*
What is the power of storytelling?
-How is a family’s oral history important today?
-Where do people look for truth?
-How can people honor their heritage?
-What determines which stories are passed on?
Main Texts:
-Affrilachia by Frank X Walker
(or another collection)
Supplemental Texts:
-Native American myths/short stories (use textbooks or internet
searches)
-“Everyday Use” by Alice Walker
-Affrilachian Visual Artists Showcase (video)
-“Mother Tongue” by Amy Tan (textbook)
-“Straw into Gold” by Sandra Cisneros (textbook)
-“A Dialogue Between Old England and New” by Anne Bradstreet
(link)
-Slave Narratives: Excerpts from The Interesting Narrative of the
Life of Olaudah Equiano and Narrative of the Life of Frederick
Douglass (in textbook); compare to WPA slave narratives written
in vernacular
-Video clips from the HBO documentary Unchained Memories (on
YouTube)
-Oral History recordings (online through StoryCorps, LOC, etc.)
How do authors use the written word to convey the power of oral
speech?
“Shush, we have too many stories/ To carry on our backs like
houses” --Epigraph of The Grass Dancer (from Joy Harjo’s In
Mad Love and War)
How does storytelling and oral history shape an individual?
In what ways can stories be a burden?
In-Class Close Reading/Timed Writing:
Read and annotate “(insert poem from collection).” Prompt:
Analyze how the author’s use of storytelling techniques reveals
her purpose. You may want to consider…(insert appropriate
stylistic elements like tone, diction, imagery, etc.)
Creative Writing*
Oral History Project: collect an oral history from someone in your
life OR research an historical figure of interest and use stylistic
devices to convey the story through the written word.
Reflective Writing*
(Reflection on Oral History project) How did you take an oral
history and transcribe it into a written text in an authentic way?
Mini-Lessons on
Audience, dialect, accent, vernacular, colloquialisms, slang,
Writer’s Craft and Style speech patterns, linguistics, written vs. spoken word
Class time for
feedback on and
revision of writing
Clearly Defined
Publishing
Opportunities
Writing workshop on oral history drafts; revision of timed essays
(possibly to add a research component)
Story Corps, GMU folklore, writing contests
Sample Lessons/Activities
Below are some sample lessons/activities that could be used to supplement the study of
Frank X Walker’s poetry in your classes.
Option 1 (2 Days):
Day 1
1. Introduce Question: What is the power of storytelling? (30 minutes or so- dependent
on length of recording and amount of times played)


Choose a short recording from StoryCorps or any of the other oral history links
(try to choose a story that is relevant to the main text)
Play the clip multiple times and have students attempt to transcribe the story.
2. Journal Entry, Pair/Share & Discussion: (30 minutes)
3. Reflect upon the process of taking an oral story and translating it into a written text.
What choices did you make? What struggles did you have? Did you, as a transcriber,
“change” the story?
4. Pair/share to compare transcriptions, then discuss responses as a whole class
(ideally, they’ll bring up most of the key points of the unit—how to approach
accent/dialect, how to capture the flow of a person’s syntax, pauses, stalling, etc.)
For Homework: Come to class with a story that you will tell orally; this might be a story
that has been passed down in your family, or it might come from another source—the
most important part is that you can tell this story from memory in vivid detail
Day 2:
1. “Telephone” Activity (30-40 minutes) Processing piece should help students
understand how time, translation, and interpretation connects to the way stories are
passed on.

Randomly pair students up. One at a time, students tell their stories (only once)
and their partners transcribe as they speak. (Emphasize that they will be
“passing on” their partner’s story, not their own, so they need to capture enough
detail to tell it to someone else)

After they’ve transcribed their initial stories, give them new random partners. This
time, they should tell each other their original partner’s story. (This procedure can
be repeated as many times as you like to create several degrees of separation
from the original story.)

After three or four rounds, have them write the person’s story that they ended up
with. Then, collect up their stories and redistribute them to their “owners.” Now,
each student should have his or her own story back, but it’s passed through three
or four different people.
2. Journal Entry: (15 minutes) How did your story change from the original version—
what’s missing? Has anything been added? Is it still the “real” story, or has it been
manipulated/altered? What does this reveal about how stories change and evolve?
Discuss this process as a class. How does this process impact our understanding of
stories and the purposes and translations of stories?
3. Application to poetry (15 minutes) Select a poem from a Walker collection and
consider how the journal questions apply to that work. Discuss with a partner or whole
class.
Option 2:
1. Mini lesson (15 minutes) on literary terms: audience, purpose, accent, dialect,
vernacular, colloquialisms, and slang.
2. Small Group Activity (40 minutes): Pass out three passages (one from a WPA slave
narrative, one from Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, and one from
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass) without any dates, author, or other
identifying information (choose passages that deal with a similar topic/aspect of
slavery); have students annotate/discuss in small groups: What do you notice about the
style? Who is the intended audience of each passage? Which passage seems most
“authentic”? How do the authors utilize these literary terms and for what effect?
3. Revisit this stylistic analysis process (20 minutes) with a whole class discussion on
one of Walker’s poems. Students should practice stylistic analysis on their own with
another Walker poem.
Option 3:
1. Show selected clips from Unchained Memories (on YouTube)—reflect on the
documentary and how our perception of these narratives is changed by hearing them
performed/read aloud.
2. Discuss how poetry is meant to be performed and read aloud. Ask students how
poetry changes as it comes to life in a performance. Watch clips of Affrilachian poets
online. Additionally, listen to Walker read his own poetry, perhaps after students have
had a chance to read the poem silently. How has the meaning or understanding
changed as a result of hearing/seeing the poem?
3. Have students select poetry from Walker collections (or perhaps poetry of their own)
to perform. Reflect on the process and outcomes.
Option 4:
To connect Walker’s work to other literature, consider some of the following activities:
1. Read and annotate Amy Tan’s “Mother Tongue” (in textbook) as a class
2. Have students read and annotate Anne Bradstreet’s poem “A Dialogue between Old
England and New.” How does the idea of writing a response to the past or old way of
thinking apply to storytelling and its power? How does this connect to what Walker
seeks to do in his work?
3. Read and annotate Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use.” How does this symbolically
connect to the questions about storytelling and honoring our heritage? To Frank X
Walker?
Supplemental Links for Narratives and Storytelling
-Resources on the WPA Slave Narrative Project:
1. Introduction to the WPA Slave Narratives:
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/snhtml/snintro00.html
2. Voices from the Days of Slavery (recordings);
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/voices/
3. Slavery and the Making of America (PBS):
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/slavery/resources/wpa.html
-Other Oral History Resources:
1. The Vietnam War Oral Histories: http://fcit.usf.edu/vietnam/
2. StoryCorps Military Voices Initiative: http://storycorps.org/initiatives/military-voicesinitiative/
3. H-Net Oral Histories Project (by subject): http://www.h-net.org/~oralhist/projects.html
4. USD Oral History Center (Native American stories): http://www.hnet.org/~oralhist/projects.html
5. Other resources for educators that feature associated information about
Walker include resource for educators, a site that contains multi-level, crosscurricular lessons for Walker’s poems and collections. Also of interest may be
the downloadable posters for your classroom and the link to fishousepoems.org
which features audio of Walker introducing and reading several of his poems.
The award-winning documentary Coal Black Voices contains a number of
excellent teaching resources.