In a year of political upheaval, I will encourage my students to explore complex social issues in their writing: civil rights, gay rights, gun violence, racism. In a few of my classes we are reading Sixties novels. We discuss Cesar Chavez and John F. Kennedy. We learn of the Moonlanding and the Vietnam War. Because the main characters of these two books I’m talking about are young women, I look forward to my students researching the Women’s Movement. They’ll read and evaluate what people were talking about. Here, I’ve decided to write about what they were singing about. Many of my students will want to compare the messages from past artists (like Aretha) to the present (Beyoncé).