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Parte Seconda
L’universo culturale e la lingua straniera
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Aibileen hurries to the bedroom and comes back with a list. “I better mark the ones I want
first. I been on the waiting list for To Kill a Mockingbird at the Carver Library near bout
three months now. Less see. (...)”
I watch as she puts checkmarks next to the books: The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. Du
Bois, poems by Emily Dickinson (any), The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
“I read some a that back in school, but I didn’t get to finish.” She keeps marking, stopping
to think which one she wants next. “You want a book by (...) Sigmund Freud?”
“Oh, people crazy.” She nods. “I love reading about how the head work. You ever dream you
fall in a lake? He say you dreaming about your own self being born. Miss Frances, who I work
for in 1957, she had all them books.”
On her twelfth title, I have to know. “Aibileen, how long have you been wanting to ask
me this? If I’d check these books out for you?” “A while.” She shrugs. “I guess I’s afraid to
mention it.”
“Did you (...) think I’d say no?”
“These is white rules. I don’t know which ones you following and which ones you ain’t.”
We look at each other a second. “I’m tired of the rules,” I say.
Aibileen chuckles and looks out the window. I realize how thin this revelation must sound
to her.
Le tipologie di esercizi da proporre agli allievi a partire da un brano come quello
preso in esame sono numerosissime. Si suggerisce di iniziare da domande di
comprensione del testo e da un’analisi degli aspetti linguistici e lessicali legati
all’utilizzo del General American English e dell’African English: un utile eserci-
zio potrebbe essere quello di ricercare tali vocaboli nel testo, discuterne in classe
e proporre delle traduzioni in inglese standard. Per richiamare ancora meglio
l’attenzione sulle varietà d’inglese è possibile proporre qualche breve esercizio
sulla variazione del lessico tra British English e American English, come nell’e-
sercizio seguente.