The Crossover

Use these links to supplement and complement students’ reading of the work and to increase their overall enjoyment of literature. Challenge them to discern parallel themes, engage through visual and aural stimuli, and delve deeper into the thematic possibilities presented by the title.

Recommended Texts for Pairing

Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds

• Reynolds’s novel-in-verse uses similar methods to explore a more difficult side of the Black American experience: cycles of gang violence.
• A useful companion piece when teaching about the diversity of lived Black experience in America
• Explores similar themes, including Confidence and Vulnerability
• Long Way Down on SuperSummary

Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson

• Woodson’s novel also uses poetic forms to trace a very different Black experience of her upbringing in the American South and Brooklyn.
• Brown Girl Dreaming on SuperSummary

Catalogue of Unabashed Gratitude by Ross Gay

• Ross Gay’s book of poetry explores many similar themes while writing about the modern Black experience, including Confidence and Vulnerability and The Rhythm of Life.
• An excellent choice for students who are interested in the poetic form and are seeking more sophisticated explorations of Blackness and grief

Other Student Resources

Transcript from an Interview with Kwame Alexander

• This long, subdivided interview with the author will provide a great deal of context for his relationship to poetry and how the poetic form works in The Crossover.

Black History and American Professional Basketball: A Story

• This essay provides a look at the long history of basketball in Black communities and provides context for its importance.

Teacher Resources

Understanding and Ameliorating Medical Mistrust Among Black Americans

• This Commonwealth Fund special issue will help put Chuck’s mistrust of the medical community in a more nuanced context that extends beyond his own health issues.
• As with most modern-day narratives about Black people in America, Chuck’s concern is both interpersonal (his father’s experience) and sociopolitical (his distrust of authority that seeks to control him); this article helps unpack what some students might read simply as Chuck’s irrational behavior rather than as a complex phenomenon.

Our Obsession With Black Excellence Is Harming Black People

• Janice Gassam Asare writes an article for Forbes that puts the desire for Black excellence and behavioral perfection in the Bell household into context.
• While the novel does not explicitly address Josh’s parents’ expectations as a phenomenon rooted in the Black experience, having that context will help foster nuanced conversation about the novel’s themes.