Overview
In this lesson, students will
explore the ways in which family narratives are woven into individual identity,
as illustrated by Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr.’s revelation to actress Maggie
Gyllenhaal of her own family roots in Episode Six of Finding Your Roots.
In the Introductory Activity,
students are asked to plot out the different sources of their own “identity
factors” and discuss what their responses may reveal about the relative
influence of family upbringing, community values, genetic inheritance, and
individual choice. In the Learning Activities, students explore five different
family narratives for Maggie Gyllenhaal and their relative impact on her sense
of identity. In the Culminating Activity, students are asked to interview a
parent or other older relative to compare his or her sense of identity against
their own, and suggest explanations for the generational differences.
This lesson is best used as
part of or an introduction to a unit on genealogy or personal identity.
Objectives
After completing this lesson,
students will be able to:
- Weigh the relative influence of family upbringing, community
values, genetic inheritance, and individual choice in an individual’s
sense of identity.
- Theorize on why genealogy is more important to some individuals
than others.
- Discuss the significance of narrative in family history and
suggest why it is so subject to embellishment and/or romanticization.
- Explain why certain family ancestry is more easily traced—either
by traditional or technological methods—than others.
- Discuss how traditions are created, how they evolve, and how they
sometimes come to be rejected.
Grade Level:
9-12
Suggested Time
(2-3) 45-minute class periods
Media Resources
Starting Points Video
A Long Journey Video
Noble Blood Video
Faith and Rebellion Video
As American as it Gets Video
Founding Mothers Video
Materials
For each student:
Web Sites
For use in the Learning Activity:
The Lesson
Part I: INTRODUCTORY ACTIVITY
- Ask students to suggest which factors contribute to their sense of
personal identity. (Answers will
vary and may include ethnicity, religion, family, talents, tastes, etc.; encourage
students to be specific—e.g. “my father” or “my taste in music.”) Distribute
the Roots of Identity Student Organizer and have each student list the
top five “identity factors” in the left-hand column, ranked from 1 to 5,
with 1 being the most important.
- Explain that the table on the organizer suggests a number of
primary sources for each identity factor. Allow students 2-3 minutes to
determine and indicate on the organizer which sources account for each
identity factor they’ve listed, from most to least influential (ranked 1
to 5 respectively).
- Divide the class into groups of 4-5. Allow groups 10 minutes to
discuss what they’ve written on their organizers and consider answers to
the six questions at the bottom of the organizer.
- After 10 minutes have passed, have each group offer their answer to
one question for the class, and have every
group answer the last question. Explain that there are no right or wrong
answers here; this is simply an exercise to get everyone thinking about
the different ways in which we come to develop our own senses of identity
in the world, and the greater or lesser role played in that process by our
communities, our families, our peers, and our own individual choices. Explain
that the remainder of this lesson will be using video excerpts from the
PBS series Finding Your Roots to explore how actress Maggie Gyllenhaal
has come to understand her own identity as a product of many different
traditions and choices.
Part II: LEARNING ACTIVITY
- Based on the responses they gave on their organizers, ask students
for a show of hands indicating how many of them would characterize their
identities as being more about their own individual choices rather than family
heritage or community membership. (Response
will vary, but should be significant.) Explain that the episode of Finding
Your Roots profiling Maggie Gyllenhaal also features actor
Robert Downey, Jr. While his story will not be explored in this lesson,
the indifferent attitude of Downey’s parents to their own genealogy is not
uncommon, and is worth exploring. Provide a focus for the first video segment
by asking what Downey knew about his family roots prior to meeting Dr.
Gates. Play the video segment Starting Points.
- Pause at 01:57, after Gates offers highlights of Downey’s film
career. Review the focus question: What did Robert Downey, Jr. know about
his family’s origins prior to meeting Dr. Gates? (Very little beyond great-grandparents, and even they were hazy.)
Why does Downey think so little importance was placed on family roots in
his household? (Downey describes his
parents as “counterculture artist types” who didn’t think family origins
counted for much.) Ask students why they think genealogy might be of
little interest to “countercultural artist types.” (Accept all answers, but suggest that artists are often more
concerned with inventing their own new identities than with passing on
what’s come down to them from older generations, and that those who
further identify as “countercultural” may go even further by actively
rejecting family identities rooted in established social orders.) Tell
students that they will be returning to the theme of counterculturalism
later, but for now, provide a focus question for the remainder of the video segment by asking what Maggie Gyllenhaal’s motivation is for learning about her
roots. Resume playing Starting Points through to the end.
- Review the focus question: What is Maggie Gyllenhaal’s motivation
for learning about her roots? (Being
pregnant with her second daughter and thus now embedded in a longer family
narrative, she’s interested in separating its facts from its fantasies.)
Ask students if they think there might be some fantasy or fiction in their
own family histories. (Accept all
responses.) Explain that many of us have family stories which have
been somewhat embellished over generations of retellings. Ask students why
they think this is. (Accept all
answers, but suggest that we all tend to remember and respond best to
compelling family narratives—i.e. stories that tell us something about who
we are and where we came from—and sometimes the literal truth is
sacrificed in the name of a better narrative.) Provide a focus for the
next video segment by asking to what Gyllenhaal attributes the
professional ambition and accomplishment of her maternal grandmother and
aunts. Play the video segment A Long Journey.
- Review the focus question: To what does Gyllenhaal attribute the
professional ambition and accomplishment of her maternal grandmother and
aunts? (She suspects it came from
the example of their hardworking immigrant father Benjamin Silbowitz, but
is open to the possibly that it might be genetically inherited.) Based
upon what they have just learned, ask students to describe how Gyllenhaal
understands her family narrative on her mother’s side. (Gyllenhaal understands her maternal
family narrative to begin with her Jewish great-grandfather Benjamin
Silbowitz, living under Tsarist Russian oppression; after emigrating from
Russia to the Lower East Side of Manhattan in 1906, he worked in the
garment trade until he was able to move to the Bronx and start a
successful small business of his own; his daughter Ruth went on to become an
accomplished professional in a time when few women worked; she in turn
raised her daughter Naomi, who succeeded in the arts as a screenwriter,
and who gave birth to two children
who would grow up to be movie stars.) Ask students how they would
describe this multi-generational narrative. (Accept all answers, but suggest that it is a compelling example of
the classic American “rags to riches” immigrant success story.) Does
Gyllenhaal seem proud of it? (She
does; she points out that this
narrative “is what I’ve heard a lot about.”)
- Point out that so far in this episode, Professor Gates hasn’t
revealed anything yet to Gyllenhaal; the family narrative they’ve
discussed is already well established in her own sense of personal origin
and identity. Tell students that the same is not so true of her family
narrative on her father’s side, despite it being considerably better
documented. Provide a focus for the next video segment by asking why
Gyllenhaal’s paternal family history goes back so much further than that
on her maternal side. Play the video segment Noble Blood.
- Pause at 02:04, after Gates explains that noble bloodlines were
documented to establish monarchies and determine inheritance. Review the
focus question: Why does Gyllenhaal’s paternal family history go back so
much further than that on her maternal side? (Jewish records like those which would have recorded Gyllenhaal’s
maternal family were often burned in pogroms, or lost in forced
migrations, while her father’s family, being of noble lineage, was well
documented as a means to determine succession and inheritance.) Provide
a focus for the remainder of the segment by asking what the fact and the
fiction of the Gyllenhaal name is. Resume playing Noble Blood through to
the end.
- Review the focus question: What is the fact and the fiction of the
Gyllenhaal name? (The fiction that
Maggie Gyllenhaal grew up with was that she had a poor ancestor who had
written such a beautiful book about butterflies that the King of Sweden ennobled
him and gave him a gyllen haal—literally
“golden hall”—in which to live. The fact is that her ancestor had been
knighted for bravery in battle in 1652, at which time he followed custom
and changed his name, from “Haal” to “Gyllenhaal.”) Ask students if
they think that Maggie’s cousin Ed Gyllenhaal identifies more closely with
his noble Swedish ancestry than does Maggie. (Yes.) Ask students why they think this might be. (Accept all answers, but suggest that he
works at the Glencairn Museum, which suggests a
particular interest in history). Log on to the Glencairn Museum
website and provide a focus for the first minute of the short video found there—“Embracing
the Sacred: The Story of Glencairn Museum”—by asking in what town the
Glencairn Museum is located, and who founded it. Play the video on the
website.
- Review the focus question: In what town is the Glencairn Museum
located, and who founded it? (The
Glencairn Museum is located in Bryn Athyn and was founded by members of a Christian denomination called the New Church.) Explain
that members of the “New Church” are also known as “Swedenborgians,” after
the Swedish scientist and theologian upon whose writings their theology is based, Emanuel Swedenborg. Ask students if Ed
and Maggie have ever met. (They have
not.) Considering that they are cousins, ask students if they think
this is surprising. (Accept all
answers.) Ask students if they have cousins they’ve never met. (Answers will vary, but suggest that
families often drift apart for a variety of reasons.) Provide a focus
question for the next video segment by asking students what the connection
once was between Ed’s and Maggie’s families—and why that connection may
have become so distant. Play the Faith and Rebellion Video.
- Pause at 03:39, after Gyllenhaal says “My dad really rebelled
against it, and so he kind of pushed it out of our life.” Review the focus
question: What was once the connection between Ed’s and Maggie’s families,
and why has it become so distant? (Ed’s
and Maggie’s fathers were both from a Swedenborgian family living in the
“intentional community” of Bryn Athyn. While Ed remained in this community
and now works as a curator of its museum, Maggie’s father Stephen rebelled
against the religious tradition of Swedenborgianism and chose to raise his
family outside it.) Ask students if they think this rejection of
family tradition and identity is very common today. (Answers will vary, but most students will have at least some
experience of breaking with family traditions in some way.) Provide a
focus for the remainder of the video segment by asking students when
Americans made their biggest cultural breaks with tradition. Play the Faith and Rebellion Video through to the end.
- Review the focus question: When did Americans make their biggest
cultural breaks with tradition? (In
the 1950s and 60s.) Why was this? (Answers
will vary, but suggest to students that the 1950s and 1960s saw the
breakdown of many previously monolithic social institutions and cultural
traditions into a greater number of smaller, more personal individual identities.)
Ask students if they think traditions are always old, oppressive, or
irrelevant. (Answers will vary, but
point out that many “traditionalists,” like Gyllenhaal’s 3rd great-grandfather, Swain Nelson, have gone to great lengths to establish
their traditions in the first place, which indeed were often themselves reactions
against oppressive traditions or
conventions elsewhere.) Ask students what they think are some general
reasons for and against rejecting traditions. (Answers will vary; suggest to students that while rejection of
tradition is often individually liberating, it can also mean the breakdown
or loss of communities it once held together.) Ask students if they
think being American is more about perpetuating existing traditions or
creating new ones. (Answers will vary; suggest that
breaking with traditions to make a new life is not only the story of most
immigrants to America, but also that of many native-born Americans like
Stephen Gyllenhaal. On the other hand, many would argue that it is only
the tradition of a common American cultural identity that unifies a
society composed of such disparate traditions.) Provide a focus for the
next video segment by asking what Gyllenhaal’s oldest American roots are. Play
the video segment As American as it Gets.
- Review the focus question: what are Gyllenhaal’s oldest American
roots? (Gyllenhaal can trace her
earliest American roots to her 10th great-grandfather John
Lothrop—a Puritan preacher who escaped English oppression with his
congregation to help establish the settlement of Barnstable on Cape Cod
shortly after the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock.) Who are some of
her fellow descendants of Lothrop? (Presidents
George W. Bush, George H.W. Bush, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Ulysses S.
Grant, and the child actress—and later senator--Shirley Temple Black.)
Ask students how they would characterize this particular branch of
Gyllenhaal’s family tree. (Answers
will vary, but suggest that Gyllenhaal’s family on her father’s side is a
classic example of the New England WASP—White Anglo Saxon Protestant—“establishment.”)
How does Gyllenhaal react to learning about this branch of her family,
and why? (She finds it fascinating,
but doesn’t really identify with them at all because she has always seen herself as more in the New York Jewish
immigrant intellectual narrative of her mother’s side.) Are these two
American narratives of Gyllenhaal’s identities mutually exclusive? (Accept all answers, but suggest that
while very different, both narratives are richly and uniquely American:
her father’s side is descended from one of the nation’s oldest and
most-respected founding families, while her mother’s side represents the
equally iconic tradition of poor Ellis Island immigrants who succeeded.)
- Ask students why they think Gyllenhaal identifies with her
mother’s family narrative more than her father’s. (Gyllenhaal was raised hearing stories about her mother’s family,
and hadn’t known anything about the extent of her father’s WASP lineage—perhaps
because her father had himself broken with his own more recent family
tradition of Swedenborgianism.) Ask students if there might be an
element of simple personal preference in Gyllenhaal’s chosen
identification. (Accept all answers,
but suggest that personal identity—especially today, in the wake of the
great cultural upheavals of the 1960s—is very much a matter of personal
choice for many people; while Gyllenhaal seems almost embarrassed by her
father’s very prominent WASP ancestors, she seems quite drawn to the
romance of the hardscrabble Jewish immigration story on her mother’s side.)
- Ask students if they can think of any means of researching a
person’s identity other than sifting through family stories and
genealogical records. (Genetic
testing.) Provide a focus for the next video segment by asking why it is
possible to trace Gyllenhaal’s roots on her mother’s side so much further
than on her father’s side. Play the Founding Mothers Video.
- Review the focus question: Why is it possible to trace
Gyllenhaal’s roots on her mother’s side so much further than on her
father’s side, despite the latter being so much better documented? (Because they have historically married
amongst themselves, Eastern European Jews share a genetically isolated
gene pool that can be traced back thousands of years, with 40%--including Gyllenhaal’s
family—being able to trace their ancestry to one of four anonymous
“founding mothers” in Ancient Judea.) How does Gyllenhaal react to
this revelation? (She’s not
surprised, saying that she “feels” Jewish.) Ask students what they
think Gyllenhaal means by this. (Gyllenhaal
has already stated her intellectual and emotional kinship with her Jewish
heritage, and now even suspects that it may inform her taste in food.)
Ask students if they think that Gyllenhaal’s DNA test has served to
scientifically “confirm” her sense of cultural identity. (Accept all answers.) Ask students
if they think cultural identity is anything that needs confirmation. (Accept all answers, but suggest that while
genetic testing, genealogical research, or family stories can tell us
something about ourselves, whether or not we choose to incorporate that
information into our own personal identities remains our choice.)
Part III: CULMINATING ACTIVITY
- Ask students to recall how many different family narratives Maggie
Gyllenhaal explored with Professor Gates over the course of Episode Six of
Finding Your Roots. (Five.The immigrant Russian Jewish roots of her mother’s family;
Medieval European nobility on her father’s side; her father’s early
American Puritan settler heritage; her father’s more recent family history
of Swedenborgianism; and her genetic heritage from Ancient Judea.) Had
she been aware of all these narratives before meeting with Professor
Gates? (No—she hadn’t known about
her early American roots or her genetic Jewish ancestry.) Ask students
if they think Gyllenhaal has more family narratives yet to be discovered.
(Yes.) Ask students how much
family narrative they think any given individual can really incorporate
into their own sense of identity. (Answers
will vary—accept all.)
- As homework, give each student a second copy of the Roots of Identity Student Organizer
to have their parent or relative complete. Assign
them to then compare their relative’s answers to their own and write brief
responses to the following questions:
- How does your
parent’s or relative’s sense of identity differ from your own?
- What family
traits or community traditions have you chosen to embrace, and which have fallen
by the wayside? What have been the reasons either way?
- Do you foresee a
time in your lives when your responses to the organizer will more closely
resemble those of your parent or relative?
- Have students discuss their conversations and the
responses they generated in class the next day. Are there common themes of
generational difference and continuity?
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