‘Monkey’ in Middle of Texas Town’s Newfound Support for Paper
Lost and Foundation is devoted to shared ideas—ideas that you have considered orsuccessfully carried out that other people in your field might be missing out on. In Brownsville, Texas, a town located on the border with Mexico, a serial story by a Chinese American author in the local paper brought out a community of people who had been previously silent—at least in regard to any interplay with the paper. The result proved energizing for all sectors of the community.
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Ji-li Jiang, author of the serial story, "The Monkey King," receives award in Brownsville, Texas. |
A couple months ago, I got a call from a middle-school teacher who couldn’t thank me enough for publishing "The Monkey King," a serialized story. She told me that the story "re-energized her as a teacher." Her call was just one in a long line of calls and letters I have received about this special story. I thought I’d share my experiences with this particular story with those of you who are looking for something wonderful to add to your program this fall.
When I read the first couple chapters of The Monkey King, a beautifully written Chinese fairy tale rich in vocabulary and imagery, I got goosebumps and knew it was the story for this semester. I had had great success with publishing "The Secret School" last fall and was looking for a follow-up that would be even better (plus I needed to replace 2,500 papers a week since Pigskin Geography had ended). So, I whipped up an excitement for "Monkey" (which wasn’t hard to do since I was so excited) by creating an awesome rack card and fliers, and going to schools and promoting it. The word soon spread that Monkey was going to be something special, and the orders poured in.
In addition to promoting the story, I contacted the author, Ji-li Jiang, and arranged for her to come to Brownsville and our 19,000-circulation paper. I cannot say enough about Ji-li and how she touched our community. Originally from Shanghai, she visited three elementary schools where she talked about her life growing up in China, spoke of what Monkey meant to her as a girl, read that week’s chapter to the kids, and answered questions. At one school she visited, where EVERY student either was reading The Monkey King or having it read to them, students surprised her (and me) with a play of the first chapter of the story—complete with students playing Chinese music. The story came to life! It was incredible and everything I had envisioned when I started publishing the serialized stories last year—not students just "reading" the story, but experiencing it as well. Ji-li also spoke about her experiences growing up during the Chinese Cultural Revolution (as told in "Red Scarf Girl," her memoir) to 300-plus middle-school students (along with college students and faculty) in the lecture hall of our local university. Ji-li got the red-carpet treatment there; the president of the university introduced her and the audience warmly embraced her. Her presentation was so powerful that many students and teachers, along with Ji-li, were crying. And talk about timely, shortly thereafter was the spy-plane incident with the U.S. and China.
I would highly recommend having Ji-li come to your community. Her slide presentations (for both The Monkey King and Red Scarf Girl) are first-rate, and she is an absolute joy to work with.
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Brownsville students show off works of art for The Monkey King. |
When we published advanced word of Ji-li’s visit, I got calls from many Chinese Americans in the community who were thrilled with her coming to Brownsville. They had grown up with the adventures of Monkey and also loved the cultural appeal of her visit. I was surprised by the calls because Brownsville is a border town. We are located on the southernmost tip of Texas and are 96 percent Hispanic, and I was not aware that we had so many people of Chinese descent living here. Some of the callers were so excited that they asked to be invited to the luncheon we had scheduled. A Chinese doctor’s wife even came to my office and wrote me a check to cover the entire luncheon. The result is that now the Chinese community here is thrilled with the NIE program and have asked what they can do to help!
It’s incredible what the mischievous little "Monkey" has done for our NIE program. Students are enthralled with Monkey and can’t wait for the newspaper each week. Teachers love the story and the teachers guide correlated to state standards; school administrators are impressed with the depth and professionalism of The Herald’s NIE program. University administrators, especially the president, are eager to work with our program again; and my publisher is awed by what NIE has done both in terms of generating community goodwill and increasing circulation. When I came to The Herald almost a year and a half ago, NIE was delivering about 900 newspapers a week; we now deliver close to 10,000 a week.
And, by the way, all of our serialized stories are sponsored by a local jeweler and his wife, who are thrilled to be associated with excellence in education.
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Schools in Brownsville held various events to celebrate the newspaper's publishing of The Monkey King. One department in the school district has already offered to contribute $2,000 toward the next author visit (Gary Soto in September), and the local university offered to host a "merienda" in its lecture hall. |
Readers Speak Up
Not only was The Monkey King read by over 15,000 Brownsville area students each week, but it was followed by many of our readers. You wouldn’t believe how many readers called me the week we didn’t publish the weekly chapter because of spring break. One woman from a retirement village called to say that all the residents there looked forward to reading Monkey each week and were disappointed that it wasn’t in the paper that week. I also had teachers call me from Austin and Houston to inquire about getting the story. The Austin teacher subscribed to the Herald so her students could get it, and the Houston teacher’s father lived in Brownsville, and he sent her the weekly chapters. Larger newspapers should take note.
Ji-li was the second author we brought to Brownsville. Avi, author of "The Secret School," a serial we published in the fall of 2000, visited our community last October. He did six events, each more wonderful than the one preceding it, and really set the stage for future author visits. In fact, our community now expects two a year. Approximately 1,100 students were able to hear Ji-li speak. Avi spoke to about 700.
Both The Secret School and The Monkey King have been translated into Spanish. We translated both stories in-house, with collaboration from The University of Texas at Brownsville. Both "La Escuela Secreta" and "El Rey Mono" were available FREE of charge when we purchased the English versions of the stories. That is The Brownsville Herald’s way of contributing to the NIE community.
Because of events such as the author visits and the overall excellent quality of our program, our public school district, local university and community have been very supportive of our efforts. In fact, one department in our school district has already offered to contribute $2,000 toward the next author visit (Gary Soto in September), and our local university offered to host a "merienda" in its lecture hall for Gary. And our local Holiday Inn always furnishes our guest presenters with free accommodations.
One more thing: All of the exciting events our NIE program has been able to present and all of the wonderful things we have been able to accomplish are the direct result of the support of our publisher, Daniel Cavazos, our editor, George Cox and our director of circulation and advertising, Becky Solis. I can count on each of them for what I need to run a first-rate program.
They show up at NIE events—that is important!—and have the vision to see that NIE creates future readers. It takes cooperation from all newspaper departments to run a good NIE program. I know that I’m very lucky.
Sandy McGehee is the director of educational services for The Brownsville (Texas) Herald.