I remember reading Tobias Wolff’s short story “Say Yes” (1985) in high school. In the story, a husband and wife are washing dishes when the topic of interracial marriage comes up. The husband doesn’t believe people of different races or cultural backgrounds should marry. He asks his wife, “How can you understand someone who comes from a completely different background?”
The wife asks her husband: If she’d been black and they’d met and fallen in love, would he have married her? He makes excuses about why they wouldn’t have met or fallen in love, but ultimately says he wouldn’t have married her.
I returned to this story recently after a colleague mentioned it on Facebook. It is ripe with opportunities to talk with students about racial bias. Students could unpack:
- The husband’s belief that people from different cultures, countries or races could never actually understand each other, much less love each other;
- The husband’s admission that his debate partner was the only black girl he’d ever known;
- The husband’s use of otherizing language when he uses phrases like “those marriages” and makes statements like, “Listen to them sometime—they even have their own language.”
The story does not identify the race of the husband and wife, but it is clear they are not black (and presumably white). This is important when discussing this short story with students; many stories and novels don’t mention the race of the narrator or protagonist, but the narrator or protagonist is often presumed white because whiteness is presumed “normal.” This opens up an opportunity to talk with students about the role of race (visible or not) on the actions and behaviors of a character or group of characters in literature.
Beyond this, “Say Yes” provides the opportunity to talk about internalized sexism. The husband helps his wife with the dishes, not because he believes in partnership, but because it shows his wife and her friends “how considerate” he can be. He notes how his wife, when she becomes angry with him, does not tear through the pages of a magazine (the way he would, presumably because he equates being aggressive to being manly), but instead turns them quietly as though considering the words on each page.
Students familiar with the basics of Second Wave feminism could be asked to evaluate how changing standards of male and female behavior might have contributed to the husband’s biases regarding housework and his role as a man.
“Say Yes” also presents an opportunity for students to consider their own biases about traditional race and gender roles, perhaps through collective marginalia (notes written in the margins of a text). Print the story out on large paper in a larger font, and post it around the room. Then ask students to write responses in the margins of the story and respond to each other’s marginalia. Ask students how reading their peers’ thoughts shifted their opinions about the story and about race and gender roles.
It’s important to help students understand the historical context of a story like “Say Yes,” as well as open opportunities for discussions about racism and sexism. When I read this story in high school we talked about the things we would be tested on: point of view, symbolism and setting. We didn’t talk about any of the other elements of the story, so the discussion lacked depth.
Exploring “Say Yes”—and stories like it—through a critical literacy lens can expose and undermine the assumption that whiteness is “normal” and provide students safety and support for talking about difficult topics such as race and gender.
Clift is a writer and a substitute teacher with a focus on youth labeled with behavioral issues. She also develops and delivers programs for seventh- to 12th-graders in nontraditional settings.
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