Students in the Black Magic: Magical Realism in African-American Literature Honors English Seminar with US English Teacher Sakita Tinsley-Beavers visited the  Makerspace for a special project to enhance their literary studies. Working with Makerspace Director Kevin Farrant, the class collaborated to create a quilt to support their exploration of magical realism, a literary genre where  the supernatural is an ordinary matter that is accepted and integrated into the rationality of realism.

The quilt project, which was inspired by artist Faith Ringgold’s Tar Beach, was a creative and collaborative way for students to deepen their reading of Let the Dead Bury Their Dead by Randall Kenan and Beloved by Toni Morrison. Each felt square is an expression of a scene, symbol, motif or character from the renowned magical realism books. The center of the quilt is an artistic composition of a photo of the class taken by senior Ellen Chen.

An engaging, interdisciplinary approach to literary learning!