Lesson Plan: Chen Chen's "I Invite My Parents to a Dinner Party"
& enjambment as a pause for meaning
Today I am thinking about beginnings & pauses & failure.
I am thinking about the beginning of the school-year and getting to know my students as whole human beings who have lives outside of the classroom that I will never fully know about and how those lives shape who they are during our shared time together.
I am thinking about the endless and complicated to-do-lists that are the start of the school-year and how tempting it is to let yourself get swept away into it— how I imagine the classroom as an anti-capitalist space and yet, the beginning of the school-year contains a “hustle and grind” sense of overwhelm that works counter to this.
I am thinking about failure, my own many failures as a teacher and as a human, and what I teach students about failure. Whenever I teach essay-writing, I remind students that “essay” comes from the French “essayer”—to try. And to see writing as a series of attempts is necessarily to allow the space to fail. “Failure is rarely fatal” is something encouraging that I mutter to myself, willing myself to recognize as true. Meanwhile, and in ironic contrast to my absurd and needless perfectionism, the necessity of failing—in addition to creating safe ways for students to make mistakes and fail—is a focal point of how I teach. And yet, I find myself terrified of it.
All this to say, whether it’s your twentieth year or your very first heading into the classroom, I sit here on the other side of the internet in solidarity with you. Your fears are valid. This stuff is overwhelming. And your decision to go into the classroom tomorrow is a brave one.
When I feel anxious about doing something—as I do right now about my first week of teaching at a university (yes, I’m taking a year to teach university writing classes; more on that maybe later)—I remind myself of what a theater professor told me as a college sophomore before a play I was acting in and what I often repeat to my students: your nerves will provide you the energy you need to perform. Further, that you are nervous is a great sign that you care and are engaged with the work you are about to do. So, invite your nerves in for a chat and thank them for the adrenaline they will provide you with on Monday to get the often exhausting job (series of jobs!) done.
I was going to write about sonnets this week, but instead I am jumping ahead to one of the most reliably fan-favorite poems I have taught in the classroom—not because I do not like sonnets (they are a personal favorite form and I look forward to gushing about them soon), but because the sonnet lessons will incorporate two poems and truthfully, I only have time to talk about the one today: Chen Chen’s “I Invite My Parents to a Dinner Party.”
Last week, I discussed José Olivarez’s poem as one of two poems that never fail to get high schoolers engaged and enthusiastic about poetry. Chen’s poem is the other of these two that I have found has always captivated even students who loudly declare they do not like poetry at the beginning of the unit (yes, students enjoy doing this and as you might have read in my mischievous letter the other day, I enjoy hearing it because I cannot wait to prove them wrong!).
How to Begin
I begin my reading out the title of the poem and asking students to reflect on the connotations. “I Invite My Parents to a Dinner Party”: does this sound like the poem will be positive, negative, or mixed in the experiences and emotions it conveys? I generally follow the Think-Pair-Share structure for this—and very often in general because this is a thoughtful strategy that helps introverts (like myself!) share their ideas:
Pose the question verbally and on the board and allow students time to independently think and/or write in their notebook. Use a timer.
After the timer goes off, ask students to turn and talk to a partner. If your students would benefit from more structure, you can assign A/B partners: A-partners speak first for a minute while B-partners listen, and then you switch.
While the above is happening, circulate the room. In particular, encourage students who do not speak up in class but who are speaking to their partners to share their ideas in whole group. If they are nervous, encourage them to write down what they have said and to read it for the whole class, or to simply repeat what they have shared with their partner rather than formulating a new response for whole group.
Move into whole class discussion, warm-calling on the students who have agreed to share ahead of time and also make space for other voices in the classroom.
Reading the Poem
Following this initial discussion of the title, I always find it helpful to read through the poem at least twice as a class. Again, I generally read it first myself to clarify pronunciation and then I ask for one or two student volunteers to read it. I try to make copies of the poem for students and to project it on the board.1 After we have read it twice as a class, we listen to the poet read the poem himself; Poets.org (a website run by the Academy of American Poets) has both the text and the recording of Chen Chen reading his poem at this link. Poets.org also provides some excellent activities to facilitate with the teaching of this poem as part of their “Teach This Poem” series (which if you’re reading this newsletter, you should check out!). For the sake of clarity and reference, I will provide the text of the poem below:
I Invite My Parents to a Dinner Party In the invitation, I tell them for the seventeenth time (the fourth in writing), that I am gay. In the invitation, I include a picture of my boyfriend & write, You’ve met him two times. But this time, you will ask him things other than can you pass the whatever. You will ask him about him. You will enjoy dinner. You will be enjoyable. Please RSVP. They RSVP. They come. They sit at the table & ask my boyfriend the first of the conversation starters I slip them upon arrival: How is work going? I’m like the kid in Home Alone, orchestrating every movement of a proper family, as if a pair of scary yet deeply incompetent burglars is watching from the outside. My boyfriend responds in his chipper way. I pass my father a bowl of fish ball soup—So comforting, isn’t it? My mother smiles her best Sitting with Her Son’s Boyfriend Who Is a Boy Smile. I smile my Hurray for Doing a Little Better Smile. Everyone eats soup. Then, my mother turns to me, whispers in Mandarin, Is he coming with you for Thanksgiving? My good friend is & she wouldn’t like this. I’m like the kid in Home Alone, pulling on the string that makes my cardboard mother more motherly, except she is not cardboard, she is already, exceedingly my mother. Waiting for my answer. While my father opens up a Boston Globe, when the invitation clearly stated: No security blankets. I’m like the kid in Home Alone, except the home is my apartment, & I’m much older, & not alone, & not the one who needs to learn, has to—Remind me what’s in that recipe again, my boyfriend says to my mother, as though they have always, easily talked. As though no one has told him many times, what a nonlinear slapstick meets slasher flick meets psychological pit he is now co-starring in. Remind me, he says to our family. Chen Chen
Analyzing the Poem
This is the kind of poem that I think about when I think about my former student calling poetry close-reading “a joyful scavenger hunt.” It is so rich for exploration and deep discussion for students. And of course, as a reader, it leaves me heartbroken and also hopeful in ways that Chen’s poetry so often does. It is seriously funny and seriously sad, at once and in varying waves.
We begin our conversation similarly to how we did with Olivarez'’s poem last week, discussing the differences that we note between our reading of the poem versus Chen’s reading aloud of the poem. Some guiding questions to ask include:
How do Chen’s intonations and choices of where to put emphasis on certain words or phrases change our understanding of the poem?
How do the pauses add meaning to our interpretation of what Chen describes in the poem?
Are there moments where the choice to break a line—enjambment—create a different tone in the poem? What is this tone: how would you describe it and how does the line break help create it?
Ah, yes, I wasn’t discussing pauses in the introduction above just to be philosophical. This is a great poem to examine the role of the pause in a line break and how an author’s choices in breaking their lines add to the communication of their poem. You may have also noticed that I tossed in that poetry vocab term—enjambment. This is an example of teaching vocabulary in context. While it is necessary to do some direct instruction of vocabulary words—particularly for English language learners, a process which I hope to discuss further in future posts—I do really dislike loading students up with a vocab list of poetry terms at the beginning of the unit. I find it best to stick to the basics and for more advanced terms like this, to show them in action. Chen’s poem provides an excellent way to teach this term with his brilliant use of the technique, which shows both on the page and performed aloud.
From there, we often move into a discussion of free verse. What makes this a free verse poem? Students are able to see that free verse does not mean free of any patterns. They use their close-reading skills (I discuss how to teach this in detail here) to identify that the poem is entirely in two-lined stanzas, or as I often use this poem to teach them: couplets. This leads to another valuable question:
Why did Chen choose to write this poem entirely in couplets? What are the effects upon us as readers seeing it visually presented this way?
The responses to this consistently amaze me: our students are so brilliant and are simply looking for opportunities to display it. The discussion on this poem provides so many venues for this. Students are quick to pick up on how the use of couplets emphasizes a relationship between two people, particularly a romantic relationship. This I knew myself, but what fascinated me is how students described the multiple dyadic dynamics at play (no, they did not use dyadic, but you catch my drift!). The whole poem is about the relationship dynamics between two people: Chen and his boyfriend; Chen and his mom; Chen’s mom and dad; Chen’s mom and his boyfriend. Twos upon twos upon twos!
Couplets are indeed a significant choice for such a poem: this is a great example of form reflecting and emphasizing content. For teaching students how to read and analyze poetry, this is immensely helpful for teaching them that poets—and writers in general—are making choices in creating their written work. Examining why those choices are made is what happens in literary analysis. For high school students in particular, the work of moving from summary to analysis is complicated and this poem provides an excellent text to help students make that move.
The teaching resources at Poets.org also suggest to show the trailer for Home Alone, which I highly recommend since many of your Gen Z students will not have seen it and several may not catch the reference 🥲. A discussion to follow about how the film allusion—a reference to another text that adds further meaning and context to the original text—relates to the poem, as suggested by Poets.org, is also, I have found a great direction to take the conversation.
Let’s say you are ready to get the students into more written annotation work. I have got you covered with this Close-Reading Guide which contains my more general close-reading annotations (adaptable for any poem) and questions that are more specific to Chen’s poem. I do make mention of a thesis statement and I am aware that I have not gone over how to teach the writing of a thesis statement, so please do stay tuned and in the meantime, please feel free to substitute that for something else you would like to teach. The TL;DR of teaching students how to write a thesis is to encourage them to write an opinion that can be supported by textual evidence: I often ask them to give me their “hot take,” not to be hip or cool (I am decidedly neither), but because they often get that language (even if it’s corny for their English teacher to say it) and that it means specifically that they are not summarizing. I will write more on thesis writing on another day that is not the day before I start teaching at a new school.
Some final thoughts on this poem2 . . . I cannot tell you enough how wondrous and affirming it is to have the poetry and literature of queer authors in the high school classroom. I do not say this lightly when I say that it is a lifeline. This poem is a sad one, even with its gleams of humor, and so I do caution well-meaning teachers to make sure that you are also making space for representations of queer joy in your classroom (and if you are looking for it, Chen's poetry is such an exceptional place to start exploring!).
However, “I Invite My Parents to a Dinner Party” speaks to so many queer students where they are and helps them feel seen. To be a small part of making LGBTQ+ students feel safe and loved is, to me, invaluable. Having seen students connect with it as they have has been a huge gift and no matter what identities students are bringing to this poem, our high schoolers often know what it is like to feel unseen by their parents, to have family conflict that is hard to talk about, to be in love with someone and to have that love devalued because of who they are. And we all know what it is like to want to be affirmed for who we are and the loneliness of when that does not happen. Chen's poem sings that loneliness and in so singing, makes us feel less alone.
What I’m Reading: the syllabi for the three new courses I’m teaching … & also just finished Ada Limón’s new poetry book The Hurting Kind on audiobook and it is more than 5 stars; it deserves all the stars, a whole universe of constellations
What I’m Listening To: the air conditioner’s hum
What I’m Watching: re-watching Schitt’s Creek and this is absolutely top-shelf (comfort) tv … I could write a whole other essay about why I love this show, but alas, clock’s a ticking
What I’m Feeling: Moonshadow curled on my lap
What Boba Flavor I’m Currently Craving: hmm, warm hot taro with honey boba
Projecting it on the board without copies works in a pinch when the copy machine is not working / on fire / etc. And of course, having paper copies prepared in advance is helpful in case the wifi decides, as it often will before an important lesson, to not work. Planning to have both in an ideal scenario and then, relying on one or the other in unideal (i.e. real life) scenarios is a good teaching strategy in general.
Shorter than I’d like as the clock is mocking me right now since I have Google Slides to make and miles to go before I teach tomorrow. Apologies in advance for what I imagine are a million typos in today’s newsletter because I simply did not have enough time this weekend to make it happen. I am hopeful I’ll have more time as the school-year calms down, but gosh do I need another writing residency.