racism

Confronting Racism and The Waste Land in the Era of #MeToo

The anger, as well as hope for meaningful change, brought about by the recent Black Lives Matter protests against systemic racism and inequality call attention to a growing need for classroom conversations about literature and social justice. Teaching poetry by Gwendolyn Brooks and T. S. Eliot together in the same course affirms the enduring relevance of Eliot’s high modernism and, by highlighting the tragic consequences of racism as well as gender inequality, illuminates how the #MeToo generation can change the way we read Eliot.