This past week was a busy one with finishing up collecting information for our project and the first draft of the site. Almost all the information up is at this point and we are working on copy editing the site.
I had the chance to talk with Dr. Gary Richards this past week to talk about the book, To Kill a Mockingbird. He was recommend to me by Pete Kelly and is the head of the English, Linguistics and Communication Department here at Mary Washington. He also teaches Southern Literature and Modern American Literature courses. He graciously sat down with me to record an interview and answered a lot of my questions about the book and how language functions in the novel.
The whole interview was really fascinating and Dr. Richards pointed out a lot of things that I hadn’t considered before. He didn’t know too much about the challenges to the book, but he did talk about the reasons why it is probably so frequently challenged. I asked about his experience and he had read it when he was in middle school and then again in high school. He studied Southern literature at Vanderbilt and said that at the graduate level there was some debate about whether or not the book should be even considered because it is looked at as young adult literature. He eventually included analysis of the book in his thesis and agrees that because the book has been so widely read that it is productive to talk about it. Now he teaches it in his many of his classes and talks about how it is structured and how some of the themes are so heavy handed.
We talked about the n-word and if it was necessary for this book, and if it should continue to be taught in middle and high schools or if it was too problematic. He spoke of how the language was probably used by Harper Lee to draw attention to the racism of the time and that she probably did think it was necessary. In his classes he has students try to decide if the word is allowable and some think that because it packs such a punch that it is important to talk about. It shows just how much derogatory language can hurt. Dr. Richards also talked about how he likes to teach problematic texts because he thinks it is important to talk about why they are problematic or why they make people uncomfortable. He does think that teachers need to carefully handle the novel, but if it gets students to read and talk about the book then it is worthwhile to teach.
I set up a page and wrote a write up about the interview with him, kind of summarizing what we talked about. The interview ended up being almost eighteen minutes long and the transcription five pages long. I made a video with the recording of the interview and included it on the page and below, so if anyone wants to listen to the whole thing they can. I am also going to include a PDF link to the transcription for anyone who is interested.
I think this interview added a lot of in depth information about the book and how it impacts society. There is a lot to unpack in it and I am really glad we were able to connect with Dr. Richards and create this interview.