Evanston teens discover the poets within

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Daejonna Dickerson, 13, of Evanston reads from a book of poems written by teen girls with VersAnnette Blackman, a book group leader for Literature for All of Us.| Ryan Pagelow~Sun-Times Media

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Updated: March 10, 2012 8:03AM

Six middle school girls have opted to spend two hours of after-school time reading and discussing a book of teen-authored poems that seem to have an empowering effect, putting into words some of the inner feelings that typically are left unspoken.

One poem touches on the relentless pressure to be perfect, and the female author’s sense that she’ll never measure up to adult expectations and media images of beauty.

Group leader VersAnnette Blackman tosses out a question that sets off a lively discussion about perfection. One girl doesn’t like being told to be “lady-like,” or instructed to take her elbows off the table. Another participant, influenced by a wife-swapping reality TV show, opines that if you want to keep a man, you need to keep a clean house.

“No man wants a sloppy woman,” the participant asserts. “It’s a fact.”

Blackman seizes the chance to challenge that thinking.

“What if it’s not about you having a man?” she asks of the girls seated around the table in a room at the Family Focus Center in Evanston. “What if it’s just about you?”

Runs book groups

Blackman is an experienced facilitator with Literature for All of Us, a nonprofit organization that runs about 20 book groups in Evanston and Chicago that collectively serve about 500 participants.

Later, Blackman relays she was a bit nervous introducing this particular poetry book, “Things I Have to Tell You,” to a younger group of girls 11 to 14 years of age, “because some of the poems are kind of in-your-face.” Most of the time she works with girls in their late teens, many of whom are teen mothers.

“What I am noticing with these girls is they still have the same issues. It is just perhaps the first time they have been invited to talk about them,” she observed.

Once everyone has offered an opinion, Blackman distributes brightly hued paper and invites the girls to write their own pieces, starting with the line, “The world tells girls they have to ...”

“The world tells girls that they have to have the perfect body, perfect style, perfect swagger, perfect photo — like you don’t want to be sloppy. But at the same time, who wants to be perfect?” writes Brielle Ross, age 11.

Ania Gary doesn’t pause for a second, before starting to fill in her thoughts.

‘That’s not me’

“The world tells girls they have to be the most perfect people ever. But guess what? That’s not me. You won’t see me walking around with a Coca-Cola shaped body or the most glamorous face,” she writes, finishing off her piece with, “I’m going to be Ania, not America’s Top Model.”

Karen Thomson, a Evanston mother who founded Literature or All of Us in the 1990s, didn’t envision that writing would become a central part of the book discussion groups when she accepted an assignment working with young mothers in Chicago.

Thomson had spent 15 years running book groups in Evanston and the North Shore, and teaching some literature classes part-time at Oakton Community College. A book-group participant was convinced her techniques would work wonders with teenage girls. So Thomson accepted a 10-week stint leading a Chicago group for some teen mothers who were enrolled in a program to earn their GED, the equivalency of a high school diploma.

“These young women that I met were in very dire situations and on welfare,” said Thomson, who showed up with an anthology of poetry and noticed the group beginning to warm up. With some time to spare at the end of the session, Thomson asked the teen mothers to write down a response to the Maya Angelou poem they’d read. When they started to share what they’d written, Thomson noticed their body language changing before her eyes.

Power of writing

“They were so proud of what they had written,” she recalled. She took their writings home and typed them up on pretty paper and handed them back the next session, which drew twice as many participants. “I thought, Whoa, this is powerful. It didn’t stop at 10 weeks. I kept bringing more books and they kept writing more poems.” Other teachers in the GED programs wanted Thomson to come to their classrooms.

Thomson discovered there were 5,000 teen mothers in Chicago in similar circumstances as the 15 in her book group. Realizing she couldn’t serve all 5,000, she began to mull how she might have the greatest impact.

With the help of a core group of board members, Literature for All of Us was established as a nonprofit organization in 1997 and in 1999, opened an office in the Family Focus building at 2010 Dewey Ave. in Evanston. Four groups currently operate in Evanston, including one that will resume in February at Evanston Township High School.

Blackman said that as teens tap into that ability to express themselves, they often want to write about everything. At the end of the year, the poems are published in an anthology and the writers have an opportunity to perform their work.

A safe space

“This is such a different approach,” said Blackman. “It is not school and it is not an assignment where you are going to be graded.” The group provides a safe space where every opinion has value.

She noted that parents, herself included, rear their children to fit their own ideas of what they want their children to be.

“You don’t stop to ask them what they think about it, how they like it or what they would change. That sense of voice is kind of non-existent.”

So the poetry becomes a powerful outlet for expression. “Wow. Somebody just asked me something that I might not have thought to tell anybody. I can tell people how I feel, They are not going to get mad and I am not going to get punished for it,” she said, adding,

“They take that and run with it.”