Multicultural Literature

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Multicultural Literature

• Breaking the Barriers

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What is Multicultural Literature?

• Literature of diversity
• Literature that provides accurate representations
  of the lives and experiences both contemporary
  and historical of individuals who are members
  of various ethnic and racial groups in North
  America and around the world

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Multiple Purposes

• Telling ones personal story exploring both the
  unique and the universal

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Multiple Purposes

• Telling original and unique stories of your
  people

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Multiple Purposes

• Celebrating transmitting the distinctive
  aspects and richness of a culture

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Multiple Purposes

• Acknowledging the personal and social issues of
  living within multiple and
• sometimes
• conflicting cultures

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Walter Dean Myers

• Writing for me has been many things. It was a
  way to overcome the hindrance of speech problems
  as I tried to reach out to the world. It was a
  way of establishing my humanity in a world that
  often ignores the humanity of those in less
  favored positions

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Walter Dean Myers again

• Ultimately what I want to do with my writing is
  to make connections to touch the lives of my
  characters, and through them, the lives of my
  readers.
• Interview, Teenreads.com

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Why do we need multicultural literature?

• A Mirror
• Reflects the realities of the cultural diversity
  within our society and our interconnected world

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Relevant Statistics

• According to the 2000 U.S. census
• 1 out of every 8 US residents ages 10 19 (more
  than 4 million people) was born in another
  country
• In California 51 of school age children belong
  to parallel cultures
• 33 of the nations 35 million African Americans
  are 18 and younger, compared with 24 of the
  USs 193 million whites
• By 2059, demographers predict that members of
  ethnic minorities will outnumber whites

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Why do we need multicultural literature?

• A Mirror
• Provides affirmation and role models

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Maya Angelou

• People were those who lived on my side of
  town. I didnt like them all, or, in fact, any of
  them very much, but they were people. These
  others, the strange pale creatures that lived in
  their alien unlife, werent considered folks.
  They were whitefolks.

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Why do we need multicultural literature?

• A Window
• Creates a bridge between people of various
  backgrounds and experiences
• Stereotypes and Prejudices are formed from
  ignorance

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Why do we need multicultural literature?

• Move us out of our ethnocentrism and enrich our
  thinking
• The best books break down borders (Hazel
  Rochman, 1993)
• Help us to discover universal aspects of the
  human experience

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James Baldwin

• You think your pain and heartbreak are
  unprecedented in the history of the world, but
  then you read. It was books that taught me that
  the things that tormented me the most were the
  very things that connected me with all the people
  who were alive and all the people who had ever
  been alive

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Important Themes

• Everyday Experiences
• Friend/ Family relationships
• Heritage
• Trying to survive while living within both an
  original culture and American culture at large

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The Power of Voice

• It is not only important to realize that books
  can ease the process of assimilation for
  immigrants books are also immeasurably important
  to established Americans who urgently need a
  crash course in understanding the new crazy quilt
  of cultures covering them. Michael Cart, 1996

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Issues in selectionRochman (1993)

• Political Correctness
• Multicultural literature without a sense of
  humor
• Overly reverential the myth of perfection
• Good stories are those that see people as
  individuals in all their peculiarities and
  complexities

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Issues in selectionRochman (1993)

• Writing as a tourist emphasizing the exotic
  other
• Sweet Universalism
• stories that have lost their and their
  address

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Debates

• Accuracy Authenticity
• - Who can write these books?
• The merit of book is not determined by the
  heritage of the author, but by their intention
  knowledge, sensitivity, responsibility, and
  artistry
• BUT there is an inner look to a culture that is
  not easily acquired and requires long contact
  with the people of the culture

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Debates Continued

• Multicultural versus Classical Literature
• - Rebellion against the dead white
  European male authors
• - Political Correctness

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Choosing a Multicultural Book

• General accuracy
• Stereotypes
• Setting
• Language
• Illustrations
• Authors perspective
• Appeal of story
• Tough issues

• How to choose the best multicultural books