Black Flamingo guided reading booklet

This is a set of two booklets (one for teachers and one for students) designed to guide groups through reading the wonderful text ‘The Black Flamingo’.

This 45 page booklet includes clear discussion activities to use for every 15-20 pages of reading, including links to topical articles, introductions to key terms and questions around sexual orientation and gender identity and an extensive glossary. The text is extremely engaging and raises lots of interesting and relevant questions around toxic masculinity, queerness, homophobic bullying, colonialism and both structural and internalised racism, to name but a few. The resources included should mean that teachers feel fully supported in discussing such issues, but the presence of adult topics makes the book most suitable for reading at KS4/5 - in my school we are reading it with year 11 students in tutor time.

Summary of ‘The Black Flamingo’:
Michael is Jamaican-Greek Cypriot and gay. Throughout his teens and first year at university, he gradually comes to terms with his identity, finding the place where he feels he belongs – the university drag society, where the Black Flamingo, Michael’s proud alter-ego is born. Dean Atta has written this novel (in poetic form) based on his own experiences and it makes for an exciting and engaging read about some of the difficulties he has had to overcome as a young, mixed-race, gay man.

These resources are designed to accompany this version of the text:
Publisher: Hachette Children’s Group
ISBN: 9781444948608