Multicultural Fiction

1
Multicultural Fiction

• We live in an age of refugees, of migrants,
  vagrants, nomads, roaming about the continent and
  warming their souls with the memory of their
  spiritual or ethnic, divine or geographical, real
  or imaginary homes.
• Leszek Kolakowski

2
What do we mean when we say Multicultural Fiction?

• Is it World Literature?
• World literature is the literature of different
  nations and cultures from antiquity to the
  present. World literature is composed in the
  writers native tongue and includes stories,
  poetry, drama, fiction, and novels.
• The term world literature is broader than
  multicultural fiction but part of world
  literature is included in multicultural fiction.

3
What do we mean when we say Multicultural Fiction?

• Is multicultural fiction books written in other
  languages and translated into English?
• Few literatures have truly prospered in
  isolation from the world. English-speaking
  culture in general and American culture in
  particular has long benefited from
  cross-pollination with other worlds and
  languages. Thus it is an especially dangerous
  imbalance when, today, 50 of all the books in
  translation now published worldwide are
  translated from English, but only 6 are
  translated into English. Mission statement
  wordswithoutborders.org
• Multicultural fiction includes books written in
  other languages and translated into English but
  it also includes books originally written in
  English.

4
What do we mean when we say Multicultural Fiction?

• How much of a work must deal with a different
  culture for us to call it multicultural?
• How far back in time can a work be placed and
  still be considered multicultural?
• Can a multicultural book be written by a person
  who is not a member of the culture described?
• Are there requirements for authenticity?

5
The best books break down borders.

• They surprise us whether they are set close to
  home or abroad. They change our view of
  ourselves they extend that phrase like me to
  include what we thought was foreign and strange.
• Hazel Rochman

6
Reading archetypal stories across cultures
connects us to each other.

• People everywhere tell many of the same kinds of
  stories about their quest to find their way.
• Our artists and writers keep retelling the
  age-old stories, transforming the heroic
  adventure, revealing the myth in the mysteries of
  contemporary experience.

7

• The mythical events in our lives include rites
  of passage the experience of birththe sudden
  transition from childhood to adulthood, falling
  in love, marriage, death our experience of the
  deaths of others and our contemplation of
• our own death.
• Wendy OFlaherty

8
In contemporary stories, the epic journey may be
into the unknown realm of space or through time
it may be a pilgrimage to Mecca, or a discovery
about someone you thought you knew. It may be
on the road, far from home it may take you
through the maze of a suburban shopping center or
through the wilderness of the inner city. It may
take you through the dark forest of a distant
kingdom or through the tangle of feelings in the
human heart. You may make the journey alone, or
you may go with a friend or mentor. Or a
stranger may come to town and transform you.

Hazel Rochman
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• For the multicultural fiction genre study please
  read two works
• One set in another country and culture
• One set in the US that involves another culture
  (immigrant experiences, other ethnicities or
  religions)