ABSTRACT
Fact: History is rewritten. Why can’t our students be the ones to rewrite it? The best way for students to understand “the tricks of the trade” is to test out their honed “manipulation” skills on their peers. What better way for students to try out their own manipulation skills than to put their own personal spin on history? After spending time figuring out how other writers interpret and retell history, we want students to try their hand at these techniques. Students are assigned a decade to research through multiple genres and perspectives. Students must write their own history, bringing to the forefront a unique bias and perspective as it relates to a contemporary audience. A nonfiction model is William Lutz's “No One Died in Tiananmen Square,” which is available online. The nonfiction writing and research stems from reading dystopian novels such as Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, Suzanne Collins's The Hunger Games, Cory Doctorow's Little Brother, George Orwell's 1984, and Katie Kacvinsky's Awaken. In all of these novels, history is rewritten.
