Journal Writing about Literature: A Journey towards Selfhood

"I am so used to not talking that I have forgotten how to think."

Growing up is hard to do in any society, but adolescents in acutely fluid or politically immature societies face greater challenges than those growing up in stable societies. As a result of the major social and political changes that took place in South Africa in the 1990s, the country is still in a state of flux and adolescents receive decidedly mixed messages about what is expected of them. School culture, including the curriculum, continues to promote Western views, but the pupils' home lives are more profoundly affected by African views. When these attitudes collide, many teenagers feel unable to express their feelings, especially those related to cultural dissonance and trauma. In this paper, I will describe a literary journal-writing project that enabled sixteen-year-old girls to express their feelings of cultural dissonance and to confront personal traumas. My hope is that it will encourage other teachers to incorporate journal writing into their literary classes.

The project took place in a medium-sized, multi-cultural, independent girls' high school. The 77 sixteen-year-old girls who took part in the study were in their penultimate year. They had been set Alice Walker's novel, The Color Purple, to read for an examination. In addition to the formal literature classes, the pupils were required to keep a journal about their perceptions as they read the novel. The concept of journaling and dialoguing with the teacher through a reflective journal was not entirely new to them; the previous year they had worked with Ngugi's A Grain of Wheat in a similar way, although submission of the journals was voluntary. For the study of The Color Purple, however, the submission of reflective journals was made compulsory.

During their formal English literature lessons on The Color Purple, the girls were taught the novel in the usual ways. For instance, they were given worksheets on the themes, characters and style as well as listening to a brief presentation on feminist theory. Each lesson ended with a discussion on the topics covered in the worksheet or presentation. Feminism and its merits often caused heated debate!

At home, the girls were expected to write a personal response to the novel in their journals. The instructions we gave them emphasized that there was no "right" way to keep the journal, although they were encouraged to include additional material, and told to restrict their entries to a single page. The page limit was intended to help the teacher cope with the workload. The girls were encouraged to submit their journals at least once a week for the entire 10-week term, but most of them ignored the page limit and also submitted their journals more often. The task of reading 77 (or more) journals each week in addition to a normal marking load was daunting, but was offset by the remarkable insights into the girls' worlds the journals offered.

The girls were told that they would primarily be evaluated on a self-assessment task at the end of the project. They were asked to produce a report that included their reflections on how they had engaged with and understood the novel, and whether their reflections had enabled them to think differently.

It soon became clear that the reflective journals had become a catalyst for many of the students to explore questions about self-identity and even trauma. The journals offered a safe place where the girls could express themselves without the fear of feeling uncomfortably different from their classmates or ill at ease in what was supposed to be their own culture. Research on cultural dissonance and feelings of dislocation or "outsiderness" by Gilligan indicates that the inability to articulate these difficult emotions results in psychological isolation (Gilligan Making198). Because some girls felt marginalized by the dominant culture of the school, the journals were an attempt to provide a space where their authentic voices could be heard and where issues pertinent to their worlds could be expressed. The journals were an attempt to bridge silences...