NC for 9th grade

      Nervous Conditions is something that exposes things to us that we as students hadn't been exposed to until reading this book. Postcolonial literature is a topic that you never talk about in Middle School. It's a definite possibility that kids who came from other schools have already talked about post colonial literature, but in the 10 years that I have been at Episcopal, postcolonial literature either hasn't come up or was mentioned but with no significance attached to it.
     The vocabulary in Nervous Conditions has many pluses to it. With the Shona vocabulary, you are introduced to a whole new culture. Cultural awareness is something that could be more emphasized in the English department. Getting to know others customs can help to understand someones voice or mood, thus making better readers out of students. This is one of the biggest goals of English I: Make students better readers. This book does well to make students better readers through cultural awareness and critical thinking.
     Nervous Conditions does well to answer our big question of the year. How do culture and community shape who we are? Nervous Conditions will be a big part of my answer to that question in May. The layered projects help you to find the answers to this question. The close readings and film studies are especially good at making you think about that question as you annotate passages and watch films. Hopefully somebody next year will realize the importance of these assignments and how they connect to the larger picture of English I.
      The exposure, cultural awareness, and overall relatedness of Nervous Conditions are three reasons why it should be in next years syllabus. At first, reading a book about a poor girl in Rhodesia sounds like something that will be pointless, but that thought is far from right. This book pulls everything that we have done this year together and helps us as students to understand postcolonial literature and its benefits.