Talking to Faith Ringgold and Sonny Rollins: Tenor Madness. . - Teaching Notes - book review

Radical Teacher, Fall, 2002 by Leonard Vogt

TALKING TO FAITH RINGGOLD

By Faith Ringgold, Linda Freeman, and Nancy Roucher. New York: Crown Publishers, $9.99.

SONNY ROLLINS: TENOR MADNESS

Giants of Jazz, CD 53061.

When I decided to create a basic writing course around the theme of "Quilts," I knew it would involve art, history, politics and, of course, writing, but I did not anticipate the role music would play, at least for a small part of the course. The idea of a "Quilt" theme came to me after I saw Faith Ringgold's exhibition in New York City at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, Dancing at the Louvre: Faith Ringgold"s French Collection and Other Quilt Stories. Ringgold's work combines quilt-painting and narrative, which appear in the form of written stories on the tops and bottoms, and often sides, of her quilts. To both see an image and read words describing it seemed like a viable approach to enhancing the content of a basic writing course.

The large museum book was both too costly and too inclusive but an accompanying shorter version, Talking to Faith Ringgold, looked perfect since it showed the major works and related them to Ringgold's own life, a combination of analysis and personal writing a basic writing course tries to bridge. The book contains sections on Ringgold growing up in Harlem, with an analysis of her famous Tar Beach; her years in college at City University of New York, where I teach; her growth as a feminist; a history of quilt-making as related to African American history; and the effects of the Civil Rights Movement on her art.

For an early in-class writing assignment, and as an example of how I used a part of the book, we looked at a Ringgold painting called "Sonny's Quilt," which shows Sonny Rollins floating above the Brooklyn Bridge with the skyline behind and the river below him. The girders and wires of the bridge look like quilt borders and the squares and triangles of the bridge towers have the same construction as the squares and triangles of a quilt. Sonny Rollins is in the center of the painting and all the lines move towards and away from him as he plays his saxophone to the stars.

The essay topic was to analyze the composition of "Sonny's Quilt" by naming everything in the painting and focusing on Sonny at the center (Introduction). The Body was to explore the theme or meaning of the painting by writing what moods or feelings Faith Ringgold conveys in Sonny's musical meditations above the bridge. The Conclusion asked how the painting "Sonny's Quilt" was like a real quilt and, finally, how the music of Sonny Rollins being played during the in-class essay related to the painting. I initially threw in this final musical question only to enhance the two hours of writing but found out that it generated some of the most interesting parts of the student essays. The music helped students tie together their understanding of the painting by synthesizing what they were seeing about Rollins as he played in the painting with what they were hearing on the recording.

Students bring a variety of skills and interests to a writing class and giving them as many avenues and options as possible for expression in their writing can only make them better writers. Using Faith Ringgold and the theme of "Quilts" brought into the writing class the substance of art, social movements, feminism, and the personal narrative. I did not suspect how important the role of music also would become.