Comparing Genres and Cultural Text Forms, and Choosing Texts for a Purpose

Remember from Grade 7

In Grade 7 you analyzed dystopian fiction, mysteries, interviews and opinion columns, and two cultural text forms, the pantoum (from the Malay pantun) and the sijo (from Korea). You chose texts by diverse creators for a purpose.

In Grade 8 you will analyze and compare: you'll put two genres side by side, explain what each one can do that the other can't, and back every claim with evidence from the text. This is exactly the kind of thinking you will do in Grade 9 English.

Hook: Six texts, one lighthouse

All six texts below are about the old lighthouse at Larkspur Bay, a made-up town on the shore of Lake Huron. They were written for this website. As you read, ask:

1. What genre or form is this?
2. Which clues prove it?
3. What can this genre do for a reader that the others can't?

Text A: The Keeper's Daughter

November 9, 1913. By noon the wind off Lake Huron was screaming so hard that Elsie could not hear her own voice. Her father had not slept in two nights. "The lamp must not go dark," he said, "not tonight." Then he coughed until he had to sit down on the stairs.

So Elsie climbed. Eighty-one steps, a can of kerosene knocking against her knees. At the top, she trimmed the wick the way he had shown her and wound the clockwork that turned the great lens. Out on the black water, somewhere, a ship's horn sounded once.

(Elsie is invented. The Great Lakes storm of November 1913 was real: it wrecked or sank many ships, and many sailors lost their lives.)

**Text B: from Salt and Kerosene, a memoir**

by Ruth Ann Mercer (a writer invented for this lesson)

I was seven the summer my grandfather let me polish the brass in the lighthouse. I remember the smell most of all: lake wind, metal polish and kerosene. He never said much. He would hand me a rag, point, and nod when I got it right.

I didn't understand then why he checked the lamp three times before bed. I understand it now. Sixty years later, I still check the stove three times before I go to sleep. Some lessons don't come in words.

Text C: What the Light Finds

Everyone in Larkspur Bay knows the lighthouse beam finds lost things. It has done so for as long as anyone remembers. Each night, when the light sweeps the town, it stops for one second on something that is missing: a mitten under a hedge, a dog asleep in a canoe, a wedding ring in a gutter.

Nobody finds this strange. Mrs. Okafor just puts on her boots and goes to get her reading glasses.

So when the beam stopped on Jonah's front window three nights in a row, his mother stood in the kitchen for a long time. Jonah hadn't lost anything. Or so he said.

Text D: Speech at the Lighthouse Festival

Given by Priya, a Grade 8 student, on Canada Day (invented for this lesson)

Good evening, everyone. Look up. That light has been shining over this bay for one hundred and fifty years. It shone through storms. It shone through wars. It shone through the years when no one remembered to thank it.

Now, the lighthouse needs us. Its paint is peeling. Its windows are cracked. Its stairs are closed. If we do nothing, it will be gone before my little sister is my age.

So tonight, I'm asking you three things. Sign the petition. Join the volunteer crew. And bring your kids up those eighty-one steps when they open again, so they can see what we see. Thank you.

Text E: Two landays

The lake took my brother's boat in fog. Now each lit window on the dark shore whispers his name.

You say the city has more to do, but the city has never once let you watch a loon.

Text F: Summer's Last Weekend, a renga written by three Grade 8 students (Amara, Jun and Teo)

Gulls over the pier, the lighthouse paint is peeling, summer's last weekend. (Amara)

My cousin packs her suitcase and leaves one sandal behind. (Jun)

One sandal, one shoe, the scarecrow at the corn maze wears them both by fall. (Teo)

First snow fills the empty field. The scarecrow keeps on waiting. (Amara)

Comparing two genres about the past

Texts A and B are both about lighthouses in the past, and both show a child helping a grandparent or parent. But they are different genres, and they do different things for a reader.

• Text A is historical fiction. The setting is real (Lake Huron, a real storm in November 1913) and the details fit the time (kerosene, a wick, clockwork that turned the lens). But Elsie is invented, and so is her conversation with her father. Historical fiction lets readers live inside a moment of history and feel it, even when no one recorded what ordinary people said.
• Text B is a memoir. It is true, it is told in the first person (I was seven), and the writer looks back from the present (I understand it now. Sixty years later...). A memoir's power is reflection: the writer tells us what the events meant to her life.

Two cultural text forms

The landay is a folk poetry form of the Pashto-speaking people of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Landays are traditionally oral: they are spoken or sung, passed from person to person, and usually anonymous (no one owns them). Many have been made and shared by women. A landay is a couplet (two lines): 9 syllables, then 13 syllables, traditionally ending on an m or n sound in Pashto. Landays can be about love, grief, homeland, war or everyday life, and many are sharp and witty. In English, poets imitate the 9-and-13 shape.

The renga is a form of Japanese poetry that was very popular for centuries. A renga is written by several poets taking turns. Stanzas of three lines (5-7-5 syllables) alternate with stanzas of two lines (7-7 syllables). Each new stanza must link to the one just before it, but also shift in a new direction. The haiku you studied in earlier grades grew out of the opening stanza of a renga.

Choosing texts for a purpose

Before you choose a text, name your purpose. Then choose texts whose genre and creators fit it, and be ready to justify your choice.

• I want to know what really happened: non-fiction (news, history books, documentaries, interviews) and primary sources.
• I want to know how it felt to live through it: memoir, historical fiction, poetry, oral stories.
• I want to be moved to act: speeches, opinion pieces, documentaries.
• I want to see my own world in a new way: magical realism, poetry, short stories.

Diverse creators matter because people from different backgrounds, communities, languages, abilities and generations notice different things. When a story is told by someone from the community it is about, you hear an insider's perspective. Ask: Whose voices are in my pile of texts, and whose are missing?