repost of my assay article on judith ortiz cofer

My great CRAFT editorial assistant Amy Cook let me know that ASSAY: A JOURNAL OF NONFICTION STUDIES posted my essay on Judith Ortiz Cofer from ages ago on their Instagram account today. (Amy has also published in ASSAY, an amazing online journal combining scholarship, pedagogy, and reflections on nonfiction. I wish it had been around when I was first teaching.)  A couple of hours later it occurred to me to look at their other social media accounts, and they've posted it on Facebook  and BlueSky too.

It's nice to see "Shuffling the Cards: I Think Back Through Judith Ortiz Cofer" get some new life. The series of eight academic notecards structuring the essay are not what I'd include today, but my narrative about my students and classes brought them back for me. It's interesting to relive that point in my life when scholarship/teaching/creative writing intersected, before I embarked on my new trajectory of writing/editing and left scholarship and teaching behind. I miss the students at Cal State East Bay. 

Here's what ASSAY says on Facebook: "This Pedagogy Monday, we’re highlighting Jacqueline Doyle’s essay “Shuffling the Cards: I Think Back Through Judith Ortiz Cofer” from Assay issue 4.1. In this piece, Doyle invites educators to re-deal the deck of narrative inheritance, examining how Cofer’s storytelling threads oral traditions, cultural memory, and generational change into classrooms. By using cards, metaphors, and shifting perspectives, she challenges us to help students shuffle through whose voice leads, how stories get passed on, and what it means to write from the middle of history."

​I love the illustration they chose: