Teaching the Museum of Human History

“Field Trip to the Museum of Human History” is a poem I wrote in 2015, while living and organizing for police accountability in Providence, Rhode Island. The poem is inspired by a scene in Ursula K. LeGuin’s novel The Dispossessed, in which a group of schoolchildren in an anarchist society is fascinated—and horrified—by a history lesson about prisons. It also takes guidance from writers Walidah Imarisha and adrienne maree brown’s thought leadership on visionary fiction. The poem was first published in PBS NewsHour in 2015. Since then, it has been reprinted in The Abolitionist (a newspaper that distributes to over 7,000 incarcerated people) and taught at the Janine Soleil Youth Abolitionist Institute, organized by Mariame Kaba and Project NIA.

This basic lesson plan encourages participants to take a step toward imagining a new world by defamiliarizing ourselves with this one. You can also read about how teacher Kurt Ostrow used the poem his classroom in this article published by Rethinking Schools.

Before Reading

Start by brainstorming a list of things (systems, practices, objects) that currently exist in the world that you wish did not. They can be big or small. (If it’s helpful you can start by completing the sentence, “My utopia doesn’t have…” or “In my utopia, people don’t…”)

Then, read the poem below and listen to the audio. While reading, keep the following questions in mind to discuss afterward:

  • Where/when does this poem take place?

  • How do the students in this poem feel as they move through the exhibit?

  • What hints do you get about what this imagined world is like?

FIELD TRIP TO THE MUSEUM OF HUMAN HISTORY

by Franny Choi

Everyone had been talking about the new exhibit,

recently unearthed artifacts from a time

no living hands remember. What twelve year old

doesn’t love a good scary story? Doesn’t thrill

at rumors of her own darkness whispering

from the canyon? We shuffled in the dim light

and gaped at the secrets buried

in clay, reborn as warning signs:

a “nightstick,” so called for its use

in extinguishing the lights in one’s eyes.

A machine used for scanning fingerprints

like cattle ears, grain shipments. We shuddered,

shoved our fingers in our pockets, acted tough.

Pretended not to listen as the guide said,

Ancient American society was built on competition

and maintained through domination and control.

In place of modern-day accountability practices,

the institution known as “police” kept order

using intimidation, punishment, and force.

We pressed our noses to the glass,

strained to imagine strangers running into our homes,

pointing guns in our faces because we’d hoarded

too much of the wrong kind of property.

Jadera asked something about redistribution

and the guide spoke of safes, evidence rooms,

more profit. Marian asked about raiding the rich,

and the guide said, In America, there were no greater

protections from police than wealth and whiteness.

Finally, Zaki asked what we were all wondering:

But what if you didn’t want to?

and the walls snickered and said, steel,

padlock, stripsearch, hardstop.

Dry-mouthed, we came upon a contraption

of chain and bolt, an ancient torture instrument

the guide called “handcuffs.” We stared

at the diagrams and almost felt the cold metal

licking our wrists, almost tasted dirt,

almost heard the siren and slammed door,

the cold-blooded click of the cocked-back pistol,

and our palms were slick with some old recognition,

as if in some forgotten dream we did live this way,

in submission, in fear, assuming positions

of power were earned, or at least carved in steel,

that they couldn’t be torn down like musty curtains,

an old house cleared of its dust and obsolete artifacts.

We threw open the doors to the museum,

shedding its nightmares on the marble steps,

and bounded into the sun, toward the school buses

or toward home, or the forests, or the fields,

or wherever our good legs could roam.

© Franny Choi 2015

After Reading

After reading and discussing, choose a topic from your utopia brainstorm at the beginning—one thing that you’re putting into the Museum of Human History. For that topic, brainstorm:

  • What sensory details (concrete sights, sounds, smells, etc.) come to mind when you think of this topic?

  • What objects might be on display in a museum exhibit about this?

  • What are some words that you might have to define or explain to someone who has no idea what this thing is?

  • Think of a time/setting when you feel free. List some sensory details that might help describe what that’s like.

Prompt

After you finish brainstorming, write a piece in which someone who understands this topic is describing it to a group of people who don’t. For example, that might be:

  • An elder trying to explain what it once meant to be “undocumented” to a group of children.

  • An alien scholar giving a presentation on human binary gender.

  • A paragraph from a history book describing “Ancient American fatphobia.”

(I love Ostrow’s suggestion to scaffold by encouraging students to begin with the phrase “In Ancient American society…”)

Further Reading

Here are a few other poems imagining alternate worlds that might work well paired with “Field Trip to the Museum of Human History,” or to fill out a unit on visionary poetry: