ABSTRACT
Pulitzer Prize winner Rick Bragg sells hundreds of thousands of books about “my people,” the Alabamians living lives made difficult by the desperation of poverty. Those people usually have little in common with his University of Alabama students, who are typically upper-middle class and, like many college students, likely unaware of Tuscaloosa’s 1-in-5 poverty rate. The first assignment in Bragg’s senior- and graduate-level writing class requires students to find and write about a working-poor Alabamian. His goal is to force students to better understand the nature of poverty and simultaneously move beyond their comfort zones to tell a seemingly voiceless person’s story with respect, passion and compassion. This chapter outlines the assignment and Bragg’s multiple purposes for assigning it. The chapter summarizes what a dozen-plus students said about the assignment, both positive and negative, and includes examples from their stories. Finally, this chapter uses theories of cognitive and moral development, as defined by William G. Perry, Jr., and Lawrence Kohlberg, to describe how the assignment provides students an opportunity to reach higher levels of moral understanding.
