Flygirl

Use these questions or activities to help gauge students’ familiarity with and spark their interest in the context of the work, giving them an entry point into the text itself.

Short Answer

1. How did the United States government treat African Americans and women of all races who served in the military during and after World War II? Do you have a sense for how the rules and laws governing minorities’ and women’s participation in the military might have changed throughout American history, and other ways it might not have?

Teaching Suggestion: The context for this novel is military service during World War II. As a Black woman, the protagonist, Ida Mae Jones, is cognizant of mistreatment and segregation as both a woman and an African American in the 1940s. Students will need to understand this context to support their engagement with all the major themes and connected activities in this unit. Understanding the complex and changing history of military service for both groups (Black people and women) will add nuance to their understanding of some of the novel’s social context.

• Students can use this interactive timeline to explore Black people’s participation in the US Military over time. Astute readers will notice that segregation was not always the normal way of things, especially in early American history.
• This article gives students an overview of and introduction to the complicated choices African Americans made to serve in the military while fighting for human rights both at home and abroad.
• These two pages from the National Women’s History Museum—“In the Military During World War II” and “Working in the Defense Industry During World War II”—can help students learn about the social and economic impacts WWII had on the United States and how those impacts created opportunities for women to serve.
• This site from the United Service Organizations (USO) can help students gain understanding of the roles women have played in the US military and how society’s view of acceptable work for women has evolved over time.

Differentiation Suggestion: For English Learners and/or students with limited background knowledge, consider pre-teaching challenging vocabulary; additionally, students might work in pairs to complete the research on these questions.

2. Who were the WASPs?

Teaching Suggestion: Sherri Smith includes historical facts and figures to inspire and infuse this fictional account with reality. This question and the subsequent research needed to answer it will introduce students to some of the characters and figures in the books who would otherwise seem fictional. Exploring the history of this program (Women Airforce Service Pilots) will give students more context for how Gender Roles and Bias in the 1940s play out in this novel. In addition to the resources below, an author’s note at the end of the book may also serve as a resource for students.

• This NPR article discusses the WASP program as well as the participants’ life experiences after the program disbanded. These firsthand accounts add nuance context to the novel’s fictional characters. Note: The article says the “WASP [felt] forgotten by their own Air Force,” however, the Air Force technically wasn’t formed until after World War II ended. This does not discount their feelings, just fact-checks NPR’s reporting.
• This interactive digital exhibit from the National Women’s History Museum will allow students to explore this special military program through pictures and speeches of its major figures.

Personal Connection Prompt

This prompt can be used for in-class discussion, exploratory free-writing, or reflection homework before reading the novel.

What is your greatest, wildest, seemingly most impossible dream? What would you be willing to give up, or risk giving up, in order to pursue it?

Teaching Suggestion: Ida Mae’s inner conflict centers around these questions. Having students reflect and answer for themselves will facilitate text-to-self connections and help students do character analysis while reading the novel. This framing may be useful when introducing the novel to students.