This week’s short story is "American Teen" by Mel Glenn, which comes from This Family is Driving Me Crazy: Ten Stories About Surviving Your Family edited by M. Jerry Weiss and Helen S. Weiss.
Mel Glenn is a poet and author of such novels in verse as Who Killed Mr. Chippendale? and The Taking of Room 114. "American Teen" is also written in verse, and is a condensed version of the type of books Glenn writes. Thirty different voices are represented, as teens from all across the U.S. relate in just a few lines their feelings about their families and how they have been shaped by them. Every type of family dynamic is represented - happy and unhappy, solid and broken, stifling and permissive. Though the reader spends just about a page with each character, it’s easy to envision each one of these teens as though he or she actually exists. Their personalities come through even in just these brief monologues, because Glenn chooses his words so carefully.
Just a few examples of the ways Glenn plays with language in this story:
Karen Glasgow from Minot, North Dakota tells of her mother, a former actress, who “has cued [her] lines to the point where [she doesn’t] even know if [she controls] her own voice,” complaining that “she doesn’t act her age - she acts mine, constantly reprising her leading roles.”
Allen James laments living in the middle of the country in Wichita Kansas:
Here at midmorning,
in my middle school,
in Wichita Kansas,
in the middle of town,
which is in the middle of the country,
I am the middle child
Allen is “so tired of being in the middle of everything.”
All he wants is to “live on the edge.”
Finally, in the segment about Donna Capisella from Boston Massachusetts, Glenn uses a train metaphor to describe Donna’s parents’ divorce:
[T]hey got a divorce, sold the house,
and moved to different sides of the track,
where I became the commuter between stations A and B.
I have two rooms now, two of everything.
I’d much rather have one of everything, even though
I’d have to endure the train wreck of their lives.
This story would be an interesting one to share with middle school or high school students, or to provide for them as a reader’s theater script. It might make a nice ice-breaking activity for the beginning of the school year if students read this story then tried to write their own mini life story in verse. There could even be a geography connection - students could read the story, then map the various locations and see what, if anything, the students’ home cities and states have to do with the content of their stories.
Since there is some sexual content, "American Teen" might not work for every classroom, especially in the elementary grades. Since it’s pretty long, for a library program I might pick and choose a few especially salient poems from the story and share only those. The possibilities really are endless with a story like this, which offers something for everyone.
Mel Glenn is a poet and author of such novels in verse as Who Killed Mr. Chippendale? and The Taking of Room 114. "American Teen" is also written in verse, and is a condensed version of the type of books Glenn writes. Thirty different voices are represented, as teens from all across the U.S. relate in just a few lines their feelings about their families and how they have been shaped by them. Every type of family dynamic is represented - happy and unhappy, solid and broken, stifling and permissive. Though the reader spends just about a page with each character, it’s easy to envision each one of these teens as though he or she actually exists. Their personalities come through even in just these brief monologues, because Glenn chooses his words so carefully.
Just a few examples of the ways Glenn plays with language in this story:
Karen Glasgow from Minot, North Dakota tells of her mother, a former actress, who “has cued [her] lines to the point where [she doesn’t] even know if [she controls] her own voice,” complaining that “she doesn’t act her age - she acts mine, constantly reprising her leading roles.”
Allen James laments living in the middle of the country in Wichita Kansas:
Here at midmorning,
in my middle school,
in Wichita Kansas,
in the middle of town,
which is in the middle of the country,
I am the middle child
Allen is “so tired of being in the middle of everything.”
All he wants is to “live on the edge.”
Finally, in the segment about Donna Capisella from Boston Massachusetts, Glenn uses a train metaphor to describe Donna’s parents’ divorce:
[T]hey got a divorce, sold the house,
and moved to different sides of the track,
where I became the commuter between stations A and B.
I have two rooms now, two of everything.
I’d much rather have one of everything, even though
I’d have to endure the train wreck of their lives.
This story would be an interesting one to share with middle school or high school students, or to provide for them as a reader’s theater script. It might make a nice ice-breaking activity for the beginning of the school year if students read this story then tried to write their own mini life story in verse. There could even be a geography connection - students could read the story, then map the various locations and see what, if anything, the students’ home cities and states have to do with the content of their stories.
Since there is some sexual content, "American Teen" might not work for every classroom, especially in the elementary grades. Since it’s pretty long, for a library program I might pick and choose a few especially salient poems from the story and share only those. The possibilities really are endless with a story like this, which offers something for everyone.
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