Mixtape for Banned Books Syllabus

One of my favorite projects to incorporate into classes is the mixtape assignment. I don’t do this every semester, but I assign it probably once every two years. The purpose of this assignment is to help students think about connections between the themes they encounter in the literature and connect it with other parts of their lives, highlighting the role of literature and art in discovering ourselves and the world around us. I’m not planning to have students do a mixtape this semester for the banned books course; however, as I was constructing the syllabus, I started thinking about various songs that would relate to the texts for the course. I’m planning to create a mixtape for this course, and during the semester, I plan to add songs to it. Today, I want to talk about a few of the songs I’ve been thinking about and how they relate to texts and themes in the class.

Soul Glo “24”

Before last week, I had never heard of Soul Glo. Listening to music on Apple Music, I looked at the related artists, as I usually do, and saw Soul Glo pop up. Working through their albums, I came across “24” off of The N**** in Me is Me, and the music and lyrics immediately made me think about Justyce in Nic Stone’s Dear Martin along with Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye. Initially, Pierce Jordan’s vocals at the end of the song caught my attention because he paints a picture which…