The Parker Inheritance

Use this activity to engage all types of learners, while requiring that they refer to and incorporate details from the text over the course of the activity.

“Character Experiences Paired with Great Works”

In this activity, students demonstrate their understanding of the impact of racial prejudice and discrimination on the novel’s characters by pairing characters with famous works of art on this topic.

Although most of the characters in this novel are Black and must contend with living in a world where racial prejudices result in discrimination, not all of the characters experience this in the same way. They live in different time periods, for one thing, and they have individual personalities and circumstances that also create differences in the way they experience racial prejudices. For this activity, you will choose three characters and consider how prejudice impacts them. Then, you will choose a work of art to represent each character’s experience.

Choose Three Characters and Gather Evidence

• Choose three characters from the following list:

○ Candice Miller

○ Enoch Washington

○ Siobhan Washington

○ Leanne Washington

○ Reggie Bradley

○ Adam Douglas

• Make some notes for yourself about what kinds of discrimination and prejudice the three characters face. Also make some notes about how they feel and think about their experiences.

Choose Works to Pair with the Characters

• From the following sources or ones that your instructor provides, choose one work for each character:

o This article from Artnet

o This article from Artsper Magazine

o This article from Medium

o This article from the Smithsonian American Art Museum

o This exhibition description from the National Museum of Women in the Arts

• Your goal is to consider not just the events depicted in the art but also the emotions it conveys. Although you do not need to necessarily look for literal matches—that is, a piece of art that depicts an exact experience a character had in the novel—you do need to have a justification for the match when you explain your choices in the next step of this activity.
• Save or print a copy of each of the three works you choose so that you have the artworks handy for the next step of the activity.

Present and Explain

• Present your pairs of characters and artworks to your group. Explain what elements of plot and characterization from The Parker Inheritance make you think that each pairing is appropriate.
• As your group members present, take notes on their choices and reasoning.
• When everyone has finished, your group must come to an agreement about which work of art best represents each character your group presented about—the number of characters and works will vary from group to group, depending on which characters you each chose.
• Write an agreed-upon list of characters and works with all of your names on it and turn this in.

Teaching Suggestion: Before getting into their groups to explain and debate their choices, students will need some time to work on their own, using their texts and the Internet to compile their pairings. If they do not have access to the Internet in class, you might print some of the works from the suggested websites for them to look at while they work. If they do have access to the Internet and will be looking up the works themselves, be aware that if your school has a strict policy against showing students any images containing weapons, you may want to preview the resources listed in the “Choose Works” section and eliminate any that violate your school’s policies. Once students are working in their groups, if time permits, you might ask group members to work together to write explanations of their final pairings before submitting their group’s list to you. If time is very short, this activity can be conducted from start to finish as a whole-class discussion where you show a limited number of artworks to the entire class and let them debate which work to pair with which character and why.

Differentiation Suggestion: Students with visual impairments may not be able to complete this task as written. A reasonable alternative assignment would be to ask these students to choose three characters and compare and contrast their experiences with and reactions to racism. Students who might benefit from assistance with abstract thought may find it difficult to pair art with characters because very few of the art pieces are literal representations of experiences the characters have. You might steer these students toward choosing characters that have more dramatic, overt encounters with racism—such as Enoch Washington—and away from characters whose experiences are mostly with microaggressions—such as Candice. You might also coach them through an example of how you would pair one of the characters with a particular piece of art, and why. Few students are likely to choose Adam Douglas to work with—because he is a minor character and his story is probably the most difficult to represent—so his character would be a good choice for modeling how to think about this activity.