Always Teaching with Dolen Perkins-Valdez

New Friday, new episode!

It’s finally Friday, readers! I have a spectacular new episode for you. This week, I’m joined by friend and colleague Dolen Perkins-Valdez to discuss teaching the writing process. Valdez, chair of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation Board of Directors, has a new novel coming out in April 2025. You can pre-order Happy Land here. I highly recommend her other titles, Wench, Balm, and Take My Hand.

Warning! This week’s Canon or Can It subject is Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. Before I ruffle any feathers, please just hear me out. And then comment away. I know this one is going to spark some debate.

I want to highlight some novels that take a shot at untangling some of our country’s—and the world's—most entrenched problems with social justice. My Six Recs are The Book of Aron by Jim Shepard, James by Percival Everett, The Bone People by Keri Hulme, Compartment No. 6 by Rosa Liksom, Vengeance is Mine by Marie NDiaye, and The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead. Maybe you can take these to the Thanksgiving table?

Find me on X, Substack, Instagram, Threads, and now Bluesky. 

The Book Maven: A Literary Revue is hosted by Bethanne Patrick, produced by Christina McBride, and engineered by Jordan Aaron, with help from Lauren Stack.

All titles mentioned: Jim Shepard's The Book of Aron, Percival Everett's James, Keri Hulme’s The Bone People, Rosa Liksom's Compartment Number Six, Marie NDiaye's Vengeance is Mine, Colson Whitehead’s The Nickel Boys, Tommy Orange's latest book, Wandering Stars, Patric Gagne's Sociopath, and Ludwig Bemelmans's Hotel Splendide.

Transcript:

BP: Hello, readers. Welcome to my new show, The Book Maven: A Literary Revue. This is a podcast where we'll dive into the hottest book world trends, address some of the great – or not so great – classics, and I'll recommend some of my favorite books to you. We'll have all that and more in this episode. But first, I talked with Dolen Perkins-Valdez about the practice of teaching. We discussed the nature of always learning from our students, how to view your own work as a work in progress, and how to know what to give to different students to match their needs. But first, we talk about how Dolen uses her own writing process to help her students form theirs. 

BP: Dolen, as you said when we were chatting beforehand, it can be pretty rough to have your particular writing looked at by students. So, people do not teach their own writing. That's not what I'm asking about. I'm asking about what you use from your process to help your students with theirs. 

DPV: You know, it's interesting because I came from a generation of teachers who read Brazilian intellectuals like Paulo Freire, and who were very conscientious about the distribution of power in the classroom. So for me, my approach to teaching is to posit myself as a forever student, right? We are all students of the process. And I am very open in the classroom about my own vulnerabilities and weaknesses as a writer, and I'm also very open with them about the tools and strategies that I've used to get better at those, but with a recognition that I'm unfinished as a writer. So, you know, one of the reasons I don't use my own work is because I see my own work as also apprentice work. And what I try to do is think about the stories and the readings that I do teach, I try to think of those stories as sort of masterclasses.

So we will look, I mean, right now in my fiction class, we're reading a short story called Yaiza by a writer named Brenda Peynado. And Brenda is not, you know, the most well known writer, but it is a masterful short story. And I have studied this story myself and I have markings all over my copy of it. And what I will do is put that on the screen, the big screen in the classroom, and show them how I study a masterful story to learn from it.

And my goal in the class is always to teach them how to teach themselves writing because I only have a semester with them. Not everybody is going on to an MFA. And even if you do get an MFA, this is a lifetime apprenticeship. It's something that all writers know. We are always striving to be better writers and, you know, the next book that we write should always slightly scare us, you know, if we're pushing our skillset.

So what I'm trying to think about in the classroom is how are we all in this moment of apprenticing and how are we all unfinished? And it also, I think the other good thing about that approach from the students’ point of view is that no one's in competition with anybody because we're all at various stages of apprenticeship, or, you know, what I like to call disrepair.

BP: I love that. 

DPV: Yeah. And so your state of disrepair might be different from someone else's. Your strengths, you know, some of my students come in very strong in certain areas of their writing. They might have a very strong voice on the page, or they may be very poetic or lyrical with their sentences. Someone else might come in and every character that they write, we all want to spend some time with. They're really good with characterization. And so we recognize that we all have our strengths and weaknesses. And, you know, I think if I ever were to teach my work, it would be to hold it up through a critical lens, my own critical lens of like, look at what I did wrong. 

BP: Well, you know that is so interesting to me because I don't have an MFA. So my study of literature was through such an academic lens, such a scholarly lens. And I've left that behind long ago, thank goodness. But I think it's so interesting to see that. I love when a writer can show you, here's what I think I did wrong. Here's what I wish I'd done differently. Here's a place where I learned something. And I know we all shy away from that for many reasons,  but I'd like to, you know, push in more to this idea of everyone in a classroom being in a state of disrepair because that's what I love about the creative writing pedagogical process and being involved in it.

I love being in a classroom and knowing that even if someone is much younger than I am or not published at all, that I have things to learn from them. It's super powerful. And so what have you learned from a student or from a student's writing or from a particular day in class? Is there anything specific you can think of?

DPV: Oh, yes. I mean, you know, I learn from my students all the time. I have some students who have submitted short stories that changed my life. You know that literally, I had a student, Yohanca Delgado, who is immensely talented and who was most recently a Stegner Fellow at Stanford. She went on to do great things, and [was a] Pushcart Prize nominee and all sorts of things.

But I remember having Yohanca in workshop. And I remember she wrote this story about this landlord and I don't know if it's ever been published. So I won't tell the whole story, but she wrote it cause it might be, you know, in the pipeline somewhere, but she wrote a story about this landlord who was obsessed with one of his tenants. And whenever she would leave, he would go into her apartment and he would violate her, you know, privacy by, you know, smelling her underwear and things like that and sitting on her sofa and watching television. And I just remember thinking that there was no one I had read who could create this sense of this man who was so lonely and so reprehensible, but at the same time, so pitiful, pitiful in the sense that I felt deep pity and compassion for him. And I remember having Yohanca in my office and saying to her, I have nothing more to teach you. You know, I remember that moment. And she hadn't graduated yet, you know, and I told her that, you know, this is your journey and I'm just here to kind of witness.

BP: That is a beautiful and powerful word to use for this process. One of my classes right now is called the ethics of creative writing or the ethics of writing creatively. I, you know, it varies. And I got an email yesterday from one of my students who said, “You know, you're having us write these journal entries, and this summer I lost my grandfather, and I have been able to write in these entries about what that's like and about how I feel about my family, and I want to say thank you.” And I thought, “No. Thank you. Thank you for showing me and reminding me that our pages, our private writing, our journaling, our morning pages, whatever we call them, you know, are connected to our daily lives and that material  becomes something that we can use for our public writing, our published writing. And it's so easy when you're dashing through the day and saying, “I need to do this, or I need to do that,” or, you know, to forget to be intentional about the different kinds of writing we do.

And so that's one of the things too that I see in.

DPV: I love that. 

BP: Isn't it beautiful? I mean, it was just beautiful. And I thought, I am so glad that she can share that with me. And I'm so glad, you know, in the other class that I've got right now in literary editing and publishing that I have graduate students who are especially, you know, the poetry graduate students who already know they're going to have to teach, right?

I mean, they're not going to make a living as poets, probably. And so, not only do they want to learn whatever they can about how to get their work out there in the world as well-published as possible, but they also already know they want to share things with other people. And seeing their generosity toward fellow students is remarkable. That is something that I hadn't expected to appreciate. And we're only three weeks in but I'm seeing it already and I'm seeing it, not just in their behavior in this classroom but in the stories they tell about some of the things they've done. So, I'm sure you've seen that as well with your students.

Any, you know, interesting turns or examples of that, Dolen? 

DPV: Well, I love that example because I think, you know, we have to sort of meet the students where they are. And I think the younger the writer, and this is just my general opinion, the more urgent it is for them to write through their true stories first, before they get to, you know, the wholly and fully imagined. And so one of the reasons I love that story is because I think with undergraduates, you know, we're often pushing them to make things up when they have so much rich material from just their own lives. And, you know, I love the idea of like, I'm teaching a fiction class and a student comes up to me and says, “Well, I didn't respond to the prompt from the perspective of prose. I responded in a poem. Can I turn this in?” You know? And then I'm like, okay, is it long enough? I don't want it to be too short because this is a prose class, but, you know, I love this idea of just meeting students where they are, and it's transformative when you feel that they've had some kind of revelation about their own lives. 

You know, that's when writing is at its best. We don't always have those revelations as writers. And so, when a student has a breakthrough moment, I feel like, okay, I'm doing good work here. Like this is not just teaching.  

BP: Thank you, Dolen. You can get a copy of Dolen's novel, Take My Hand, wherever books are sold.

Now let's move on to Friday Reads where we'll see what you've been reading this week. 

BP: It's time for another Friday Reads Roundup and of course my producer Jordan is here to help me out. How are you, Jordan? 

JA: I'm doing very well. How are you doing?

BP: Very well. So what have we got?  

JA: Alright, we've got to start things off from the Nebraska Library Commission. They say this week’s #FridayReads is Tommy Orange's latest book, Wandering Stars, both prequel and sequel to his novel There, There. It takes Orange's distinctive world building even further. It's breathtaking and heartbreaking. Read the staff review on #NLCBlog. 

BP: What a great Friday Reads post. Hello, Nebraska Library Commission. We love you. We love that you're using Friday Reads, and we love that you are promoting Tommy Orange, who is certainly one of our best novelists working today. And also one of the best indigenous writers working today.

Wandering Stars, I think is so interesting because, as they point out in this post, it is prequel and sequel. It really, really helps you understand what's going on with the characters in There, There. So I highly recommend reading both of them. And after you read Wandering Stars, you might want to go back and read There, There again.

So onward to the next Friday Reads post.

JA: And the next Friday Reads post is from @BermudaOnion saying, I'm reading Sociopath by Patric Gagne. 

BP: Bermuda Onion is a longtime Twitter person that I have followed and who has followed me. So, hi, so good to see you. And Patric Gagne's Sociopath is a powerful memoir about her being a sociopath. But here's the twist: Gagne is a licensed therapist now. And so as a sociopath, because it's not something that can be cured, she is out there giving therapy to people. And she will tell you why that works and how that works. It is a pretty interesting book. I'm not sure if I recommend it or if I think it is something that maybe people should consider before they read. It might be triggering for some people. 

JA: Okay, and then up next we've got, from Rick Barry, The tender plant that is morality does not thrive in a grand hotel and withers altogether in its private rooms. Ludwig Bemelmans's Hotel Splendide. 

BP: I love it. It's from Pushkin Press. It's one of Pushkin Press's new titles. They are so beautiful, these books. They're paperbacks, but they're really, really carefully designed and put together and chosen too. So, Bemelmans, we all know him from Madeline, the incredibly popular children's book series, and of course, the iconic Bemelman's bar that he painted at the Hotel Carlisle or the Carlisle Hotel in Manhattan.

And so, Bemelmans had a distinct style as an illustrator, but also a distinct style as a writer. And Hotel Splendide is a book for adults. And I love this quote from Rick Barry about it. Thanks so much for taking part in Friday Reads. So let's go on. I think we've got one more, Jordan?

JA: Yeah, we've got one more from Joe or Sarah for some, they say, “God, I love this book.

#FridayReads, #Reread. And the book is Pachinko by Min Jin Lee. 

BP: Pachinko by Min Jin Lee. Such an achievement. Min, whom I know a little, is an incredible novelist. Read Free Food for Millionaires, which came before Pachinko. Pachinko is now on the small screen as an adaptation. So everyone knows a little bit about it, but it is truly remarkable and I agree with Joe, Sarah I hope someday for me, about rereading Pachinko because it's a very rich story about Korea, Japan, occupation, family, survival, and deprivation. It's truly, truly important. So, [I] highly recommend this one. And thank you, Jordan, for another great set of Friday Reads. 

BP: In our heavily polarized times, when books are a key battleground over the way we teach about the past, it's become apparent to me that some books in our literary canon need some evaluation. One such book is To Kill a Mockingbird, which lives on to this day, teaching its misguided lessons to students year after year. You can probably see where I'm going with this, so let's just jump right into today's Canon or Canon. 

It's the most plotting, predictable plot I've ever come across. And believe me, I already know that all plots derive from A Stranger Comes to Town. However, many writers use that to great effect. 

Not here. Not in this sleepy, ignorant town. A town so out of step with its times that only a white male father figure can nudge the burg from its complacency. That's right. In this episode of Cannon or Can It, I'll be canning a classic, and I expect many of you will disagree with me. But first, listen to why I'm panning this famous novel because it's not a knee jerk reaction.

I have reasons for suggesting that Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird should be taken down a notch or ten on your reading lists. And I'm not mocking that bird when I say all of the above. I'm telling you what I see each time I try to read it again. 

There's a lot of ugly things in this world, son. I wish I could keep them all away from you. 

A brief bit of plot summary for those who haven't read the book or who might have forgotten.  Atticus Finch, a widower, and his two children, Scout and Jem, live in Maycomb, Alabama.  Finch père is a lawyer, so despite the deprivations of the Depression, he and his family lack no comforts. Scout and Jem, in the summer the book takes place, befriend a boy named Dill, and the trio become somewhat obsessed with the old Radley place, now occupied by the owner's brother nicknamed Boo.  

I'll get to all of the above characters but let me speed up a little lest you start to feel the humid heat of an Alabama summer just through boredom. Most of what happens next has to do with Boo and his brother Nathan and the kids. Very, very little about racism or justice for African Americans happens as the year passes. Then, Finch takes on the defense of a Black man named Tom Robinson who is accused of raping a white woman named Mayella Ewell. I can't even get started on these pandering portraits of the Black community, like when the Finch housekeeper Calpurnia takes poor Scout and Jem – the other kids are making fun of them because their father is defending a Black man – to her ever so warm, ever so accepting black church.  At this point in the book, I'll make a confession. I'd rather read Lee's later version of the book, published in 2015 as Go Set a Watchman, than continue to the end.  The big reveal is that somehow, 13 year old Scout talks down a member of a lynch mob out to kill Robinson. 

This allows a trial to proceed, but surprise, surprise, Robinson is found guilty, then shot and killed when he tries to escape from prison. Meanwhile, Bob Ewell, Mayella's father, attempts to hurt Jem, who is carried home by a mysterious stranger. It's Boo, whose affection for the children has grown to such an extent that he can finally manage to leave his house and come to their aid. 

If it sounds as if this book begins and ends with white privilege, well ding, ding, ding. And that's why I'm urging us all to can it, and send it out of the canon once and for all. I haven't even mentioned the many, many instances of a terrible racial epithet in the book, which do nothing to advance our understanding of what is taking place.

Once upon a time, and I'm using that fairytale trope deliberately, Americans gazed at racial injustice through a lily white lens. That's no longer true, thank all the gods and goddesses. We have heard from many writers of color about the white savior problem in Mockingbird. And as critical thinkers, which I hope all of you listeners are, that's a line drawn. It's time to listen to other voices, and unless those voices find a work of literature to be authentic and useful, to consider putting that work in its place.  The narrative about race relations in To Kill a Mockingbird is inauthentic and harmful to me. But that's not why I, as a white person, am saying, “Can it.” I'm listening to people who have the real, lived experience of what it is like to be black in this country. To me, that knowledge is enough of a reason not to keep To Kill a Mockingbird in the canon. 

BP: While I don't think To Kill a Mockingbird teaches the right lessons about our nation's generational struggle with injustice, I do think there are plenty of great novels that tell better stories. In today's Six Recs, I'm highlighting some novels that take a shot at untangling some of our country’s and the world's most entrenched problems with social justice. 

I'm back with another round of Six Recs and these are books I think that are great newish takes on old, longstanding injustices. Injustice? Jordan, my producer, is here with me. So maybe he knows how to pronounce injustices/injustices.  

JA: I do not.

BP: Oh, well, you know, in any case, I think these six books are really, really fantastic.

And as you know, if you've listened to six recs before Jordan's going to be timing me and I'm going to try to give you six recs in under three minutes. And if not, well, you know, the bookshelf's going to fall. So let's see how we do today, Jordan. 

JA: We’re rolling.

BP: Excellent. So, Jim Shepard's The Book of Aaron is by one of our greatest living writers.

Hi, Jim. And he takes on the Holocaust in this slim, affecting, and complex 2015 narrative that's told by a teenage boy named Aaron, who is saved from the Warsaw Ghetto by a brave doctor named Janusz Korczak. Korczak eventually traveled to the Treblinka death camp with these children who were under his care. And Aaron faces some very painful choices that will force readers to think about their own courage. So highly [I] recommend.  

Percival Everett's James is a book I've recommended before in this season. He takes a character from Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and gives him back his proper name and proper story and voice. So Jim is now James, a freed slave who tells his story for his own community and his own people. I think the phrase tour de force might have been coined for this novel and it deserves a place in literary curricula right next to its source material. 

Next up, Keri Hulme’s The Bone People is from 1986. Okay, this is a bit older than the other ones, but it did win the Booker Prize, which was the first time a New Zealand author had won the Booker Prize. It's utterly original. It's about a neurodivergent, aromantic, asexual woman called Carolyn Holmes, who needs something in her life. And when she meets a mute boy named Simon, then his Maori foster father Joe, she learns that love and violence are sometimes intertwined. It's a book about colonization and its aftermath and it's structurally and substantively experimental. Onward.

Rosa Liksom's Compartment Number Six is set in the 1980s, but it was published in 2016. It's a novel by Liksom, who's a Finnish writer, highly regarded, and it's an account of a train journey from Moscow to Mongolia involving a young Finnish woman sharing a compartment with a much older Soviet army veteran. At first, their encounter seems menacing, but eventually as they share some food and drink, play cards, and swap stories, a parable of lost empires emerges. Really, really different. 

Next, Marie NDiaye’'s Vengeance is Mine. This just came out this year. And if you've been following even a bit of the current French trial involving Giselle Pelicot, whose husband has confessed to drugging her and allowing his friends to rape her, you will be fascinated by this novel, in which a middle aged French woman who is a lawyer known as Maitre Suzanne begins to break down while defending a powerful man's wife. 

Finally, Colson Whitehead, The Nickel Boys. Sometimes Whitehead writes satire, sometimes sci-fi, sometimes capers. But here he writes a straightforward historical novel based on the tragic history of a 111 year old reform school for Black youth. Through the eyes of protagonist Elwood, readers come to understand that the real life Dozier School for Boys in Mariana, Florida was no anomaly. 

That's it for this week. How did I do, Jordan? 

JA: Well, you came in at three minutes and twenty-five seconds. 

BP: Oh, alright, I'll do better next time. Thanks so much.  

Well, that does it for this episode of The Book Maven: A Literary Revue. Follow us on Substack for daily posts about new book releases, commentary, and more. It's free. Talk to you next week. 

The Book Maven: A Literary Revue is produced and hosted by me, Bethanne Patrick. It's also produced by Christina McBride, with engineering by Jordan Aaron, and our booking producer is Lauren Stack.