A band in my second section was doing their presentation on Harriet Jacobs' Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. As per the instructions for the presentations, they were ready to creatively present the information contained in the reading and suggest some possibilities for concrete instructions for the final projects based upon the reading.

However, unlike the comical skits of psychiatrists' offices and the Oprah show which had preceded them in other band presentations, this band chose to do something different. They explained that they felt the material warranted a more respectful treatment than a humorous skit. As a result, they had decided to do precisely what Jacobs had done in her book--to share how racism and sexism had affected their lives. So, these five young men and women, ranging from a "sorority girl" to a hispanic hip-hop new york city boy, stood in front of the class and told their stories vis a vis racism and sexism. They talked about their incredulity at going to new schools with different types of people whom they'd never encountered before. They talked about the pain of romantic relationships, the pressures to be sex objects (the females) and the pressures to treat females like sex objects (the males). These monologues lasted for at least a half an hour, but the rest of the class, myself included, was riveted. The class discussion following their instruction suggestions continued the trend of confessional sharing about racism and sexism. One young white male student admitted that when he read the book, he wondered what he would've done as a white male had he lived back in the middle of the nineteenth century when Jacobs was writing. He agonized, "Would I have participated in the system of slavery?" Class e- mails following this presentation indicated what a bonding experience this confessional moment had been for everyone. I felt proud that I had set a tone of safety and respect for all, enough so that students had taken the intiative to get very personal about the effects of institutionalized oppression in their lives.

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