Guiding Principles for Teaching Multicultural Literature

        Since taking my multicultural literature class I have been cognizant of the insider and outsider authorship, and how others may view stories when written by someone outside the community. My question does it matter if the author has done extensive research and she or he is sensitive to the culture, dynamics, and political environment during the period of the book was written?  In the case of the book The Boy in The Striped Pajamas, I would say yes it matters. The focus of the story is on the boy whose father is exterminating the Jews and not on the Jewish boy and his plight. While the story is viewed from both boys perspectives the book focuses more on the boy whose father is the Nazi Commander putting the Jews to death.

                Even at the end of the story when the reader knows that both the boys died in the gas chamber the focus is on the Nazi father and their family who still looking for the son.  For Nazi Commander not to make the connection between his son’s clothes at the fence and his missing son is ridiculous.  While I understand that the book wants the reader to look at the story from a different perspective, I find it difficult in this situation because the senseless slaughter of the Jewish people cannot be compared to the loss of the Nazi Commander's son.

                I would be interested to hear Dr. Shictman’s perspective on this book.

                With that said, I am moving onto another book that I found intriguing because of the characters in the story. Ed Young translated a Chinese fairytale called Lon Po Po, in America, the book would be titled  Little Red Riding Hood. What is intriguing about this story is that there are three daughters left at home alone while the mother goes off on an errand. The girls are told not to answer the door—they do and the story ensues. The girls defeat the wolf on their own without the help of a male character.

                What really makes this story interesting is that in China a household with one girl is unusual and to have a household with three girls would be unheard of. From personal experience I know that girls are considered second class citizens. My brother and sister-in-law have adopted my two nieces from China. One they adopted at nine months and the other at 10 years of age. Each niece was living in an orphanage. They had been abandoned by their mothers as infants. Most households reject the female baby if she comes before a male is born. The Chinese philosophy is that the son will take care of the parents as they age.  Another law in China is that each household may only have two children unless special permission has been given, this is for population control. So for the Chinese fairytale to have three sisters as the heroes in the story and be living in one household is very clearly making a statement against government regulations designating how many and what sex the children are in a household.

Clark and Blackburn

I was glad to get a list of LGBTQ young adult books to read, but it would have been more beneficial to get tips on teaching LGBTQ in a classroom. What is apparent from this article is that the school systems across the nation haven’t moved forward much in recognizing the need for equity for all people. This article made me think of the public school my children went to. Their school, while public, is heavily influenced by the faith community it resides in. Unless the state mandated that LBGTQ texts were required texts in literature classes, these books not only would not reside on a shelf in the library or classroom, they would not even make it past the school doors. With that said, I did not make a move to change the system either. Frankly, I did not pay close attention to all the texts my children read because, for the most part, they were the same canonical texts I read in high school. And when you’re running around in a “white heterosexual” world you do not pay attention to the “other” and their need for equity.

              I understand how tough it would be to teach “non-normative” texts to students especially after reading Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg. This book is a gritty, raw, and powerful novel depicting a young girl’s journey through life as “she/he” tries to figure out how to survive and live in a world that doesn’t accept a person who does not fit the “status quo.”  There were many terms I was unfamiliar with and frankly unaware even existed. Teachers would be addressing LGBTQ stereotypes and misinformation in what would most likely be an emotional classroom environment.  In most cases teachers would be learning right along with the students, which isn’t any different than what Allen Webb said about teaching and learning literature of today’s Middle East, a touchy subject as well.

Teaching the Literature of Today's Middle East

I am looking forward to hearing Allen Web speak not only in our class but beforehand in room 407.  While working on a project that involved Help The Afghan Children (HTAC), I found and read many different texts trying to discover a truer perspective, not the propagandized version, of Afghanistan and the Afghani people. Here is a list of some of the books I read: The Other Side of the Sky by Farah Ahmedi, My Forbidden Face by Latifa, The Swallows of Kabul by Yasmina Khadra, West of Kabul, East of New York by Tamim Ansary, The Breadwinner by Deborah Ellis, and The Sewing Circles of Herat, by Christina Lamb. Ahmedi’s and Latifa’s books are true stories told by young girls who lost family and fled Afghanistan to safety in America and France respectively.  Khadra is a pseudonym for Mohammed Moulsesehoul who was an officer for the Algerian army when this novel was written. He now lives in France. Ansary left Afghanistan at the age of sixteen and moved to America. He wrote this book as an American/Afghani straddling two different cultures after 9/11.  Ellis is from Canada, and at the time of the novel Breadwinner she was worked with “Peace Movement and the Women's Movement.” The inspiration for this novel came from her time in a Pakistani refugee camp for Afghanis. Lamb is from England, and a journalist. She was in Afghanistan during the Soviet and Afghani war, and once again during the Taliban and American war. This non-fiction book is the result.

              Some of these books I enjoyed more than others but all of them were interesting to read nonetheless. I agree with Webb that our country should have more texts from the Middle East. Actually, we should include texts from many more countries and not focus mainly the Brits and Americans. While we’re at it, why don’t we drop the word English off of English Literature and make it International Literature.  I have read some great books from Germany, Turkey, Russia, and Ireland. Someday I hope to travel to Afghanistan. Meanwhile, I continue to keep track of Suraya Sadeed and her efforts with the HTAC.

Introduction On the Policies of Literature

The lines “American literature is male. To read the canon of what is currently considered classic American literature is perforce to identify as male . . . Our literature neither leaves women alone nor allows them to participate. It insists on its universality at the same time that it defines universality in specifically male terms (xii), brought to mind Mitra’s comments about Walt Disney’s films and the book series Twilight.

As we well know, Disney portrays the female protagonist as helpless and needing to be rescued by a “prince charming” or not so charming as in “Beauty and the Beast.” In the film “Mulan” the protagonist had to disguise herself as a man in order to save the “world” then Disney has her marry the prince as if she is the prize for a well fought battle.

                It is not just the canonical texts or the old fairytales and storybooks that perpetuate the dominance of the patriarchal perspective. Stephanie Meyer’s block buster books and movies has the female protagonist, Bella, in an abusive relationship thereby making stalking, vandalizing a lover’s car, isolating one from friends, and controlling what doctor one sees as protective and romantic. Not to mention making it seem okay to watch one sleep without permission or knowledge—very creepy!

                 I have yet to figure out why the male population is so fearful of the female population. Yes, this is a sweeping statement. And yes, there are many men who treat women with respect and equity but overall women in society are still battling for respect, which leads me back to the thought that men fear women and/or what women represent. What is really sad is woman like Stephanie Meyers who perpetuate the dominance of man over woman under the guise of romanticism in her books.

               

Texts of Our Institutional Lives: Studying the “Reading Transition” from High School to College: What Are Our Students Reading and Why?

I enjoyed this article for several reasons. First it was interesting to see what students classified as reading, whether academic or nonacademic. Second I liked the in depth questions the students were assigned in their journaling. I was not surprised, that even though they were paid, they did not keep an updated journal. My guess “shiny objects” distracted them. Nor was I surprised that most students did not make a connection from text to text or text to world. At this age their world tends to have a pretty narrow focus, combined with the fact that many students do not find texts in school relevant to their lives. As the GA for the Gen Ed program, I sat in on a few first-year student seminars.  Professors discussed how to show students that their classes relate to another, as well as to the world outside of academia.  During their discussions several of the professors decided to create a “theme teaching curriculum” thereby reinforcing the cross relationships.

                David Jolliffe and Allison Hart addressed this possibility in their “suggested three avenues” approach. In particular the second avenue stated that, “faculty members and administrators need to create curriculums, co-curriculums, and extra-curriculums that invite students to engage in their reading and to connect texts that they read to their lives, their worlds, and other texts” (613).  Jolliffe and Hart also stated that there was room for “learning-community programs—in which students are taking two or three courses together, focusing on a common theme—foster this kind of curricular connectivity . . .” (613, 614). EMU has this type of program in place for first-year students. The Gen Ed program in conjunction with “Residential Life” created a grouping of three classes with a theme, which is reinforced and supplemented in the resident halls and apartments. New this fall are several classes offering the same theme as the tri classes with the intent of making connections between classes, dorm life, and outside activities. The goal is to create a cohesive experience with students, professors, and EMU life in order to help students stay focused on their four year program. A program that helps students see the relevance of their learning, as well as how classes combine and build upon one another. Students need to be able to see “beyond the grade” in order to inter-relate their courses, hopefully this program will accomplish these goals.

I find that Kathleen Yancey’s article “Literacy Demands of Entering the University” dovetails well with Jolliffe’s and Harl’s article. She states that there are three basic ways of testing incoming freshmen’s literacy levels, which are Advanced Placement (AP) testing, dual enrollment, and self-assessment testing. She goes on to say that these testing methods have some very real issues when assessing critical and rhetorical literacy levels of incoming freshman. The students who score a 3 on the AP exam tend to struggle when taking sophomore courses. Statistics show that those students that “dual enrolled failed a timed writing task at a third higher rate than those students who completed composition on campus” (259).

The self-assessment method that students (EMU’s method of testing incoming freshman) can take before entering college leads to issues because the questions are too vague and do not allow students to truly assess their ability compared to the expectations of the college. This method in particular creates a gap of knowledge and ability between students in a mainstream composition course. The gap between students’ writing skills and what is required by the college they attend is directly related to their ability to relate from text to text and text to world. If students do not relate to a text or text to world how will they articulate their thoughts on the subjects in the texts, and if they do not have the skills to articulate their thoughts in writing how are they going to learn to make the association from text to the world?