"How Lil Wayne helped me survive my first year teaching in New Orleans."

Published November 25, 2008 @ 04:58PM PT

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Nick Bishop, a friend and Nashville-based Millennials Changing America contact, pointed out the following piece that a friend of his wrote. If this isn't reflective of the post-modern, pop culture orgy cluster that is millennial activism, I don't know what is.

I WILL FOREVER REMAIN FAITHFUL: How Lil Wayne helped me survive my first year teaching in New Orleans.

This story isn't really all that different from Dangerous Minds, or whatever that book was called before its rights were bought and it was turned into a terrible Michelle Pfeiffer movie. It's a bit less sentimental, there's less tangible redemption, and Lil' Wayne takes the part of Bob Dylan as a vehicle for connecting with young, urban youth:

A few weeks later, I gave him a copy of a New Yorker piece on Lil Wayne.

“Actually, that was good,” he said, later. “You teach me to write like that?”

Since the plot-line of the story is old - outsider teacher connects with rough-and-tumble students over pop culture - it is not the plot that pertains exclusively to Millennials. The young activist, in this case a young, out of place teacher, does, however, view his experience through the lens of Lil' Wayne and tells his story by way of his lyrics, legend, and myth. In an exceedingly post-modern style, he openly explains his experience with the same fabric on which he experienced it, which is, especially after having been raised on a wave of post-modern fiction that we've been privy to in print (R.I.P D.F.W.), on screen (in it's pop form, David Fincher's adaptation of Fight Club or any film for which Spike Jonze of Charlie Kaufman have been responsible), or in music (via Weezy himself), predominantly how we tell our stories.

The greatest irony about our being a generation that so very-much values authenticity is that there are so many self-referential layers to our narrative - especially useful when connecting with an otherwise alien culture - that assessing what is "real" and what is not is a task worthy of a doctorate.

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Thank you for posting this article.

Posted by ONE FAMILY FOUNDATION on 05/14/2009 @ 01:10PM PT
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Alex is a freelance journalist, activist, and online community management consultant based in Boston and Portland, Maine. He currently serves as executive editor of MakeSomethingHappen.net, where he writes about online organizing and the power of collective action.