Analyzing Multicultural Literature

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Analyzing Multicultural Literature
ELE 616 Readings and Research in Childrens
Literature
Fall 2009
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Why analyze literature?

• To discover the full spectrum of the content

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A little Newtonian physics

• Isaac Newton first used the word spectrum (Latin
  for appearance or apparition) in print in
  1671 in describing his experiments in optics.
  Newton observed that, when a narrow beam of white
  sunlight strikes the face of a glass prism at an
  angle, some is reflected and some of the beam
  passes into and through the glass, emerging as
  different colored bands.
• NationMaster Encyclopedia gt Visible light

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Spectrum requires a prism

• Estonian composer Arvo Pärt
• I could compare my music to white light which
  contains all colours. Only a prism can divide the
  colours and make them appear this prism could be
  the spirit of the listener.
• about his music Alina 

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Prism as a filter

• Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin
• The biographer finds that the past is not simply
  the past, but a prism through which the subject
  filters his own changing self-image.
• Goodwin, Doris Kearns (1979). Angles of
  Vision, in Mark Pachter (Ed.), Telling Lives
  the biographers art. Washington, DC New
  Republic Books. Cited in Debate and Reflection
  How to Write Journalism History

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A prism to view the full spectrum of literature

• Personal

Real
Invented
SMiley face
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Personal?

• Do you feel as if youre involved part of the
  action?
• That these are real people were dealing
  withsome identifiable personalities

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Real?

• Is there something that makes you feel that this
  could have happened?
• Even when it couldnt in real life?

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Invented?

• Is this story invented, created by one or more
  authors?

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Smiley Face?

• Does it seem generic, impersonal?

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Two Continuums

• Real Invented
• Personal SMiley Face

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Put em together!
Real
Per so n a l
SM il e y
Invented
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Application to Literature???
. . . and Indians????
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Top Left Sector of Matrix

• Up close and personaland real!

Real
Folklore Folklore is the body of expressive
culture, including tales, music, dance, legends,
oral history, proverbs, jokes, popular beliefs,
customs, material culture, and so forth, common
to a particular population, comprising the
traditions (including oral traditions) of that
culture, subculture, or group. (Wikipedia)
Personal
Invented
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A rival to Paul Bunyan and John Henry

• Fink, Mike, 1770?1823?
• American border hero, whose exploits have been so
  elaborated in legend that the actual facts of his
  life are difficult to discover. He was born
  probably at the frontier post of Pittsburgh, took
  part in the wars against the Native Americans of
  the Ohio region, and subsequently became a
  keelboatman on the flatboats of the Ohio and
  Mississippi rivers. He later turned to trapping.
• Mike Fink. The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth
  Edition. 2008. Retrieved September 17, 2009 from
  Encyclopedia.com http//www.encyclopedia.com/doc/
  1E1-Fink-Mik.html

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Mike Fink tale

• By the then beautiful village of Louisville
• Among a band of Indian outcasts was a
  Cherokee, who bore the name of Proud Joe . . .
  Joe still wore, with Indian dignity, his
  scalplock he ornamented it with taste, and
  cherished it, as report said, until some Indian
  messenger of vengeance should tear it from his
  head, as expiatory of his numerous crimes. Mike
  had noticed this peculiarity and, reaching out
  his hand, plucked from the revered scalplock a
  hawk's feather. . . . Mikes ball had cut it
  clear from his head the cord around the root, in
  which were placed feathers and other ornaments,
  still held it together the concussion had merely
  stunned its owner farther - he had escaped all
  bodily harm!
• Mike Fink, the Keel-boatman in Thorpe, T.B.
  (1854). The Hive of The Bee Hunter. A
  Repository of Sketches, Including Peculiar
  American Character, Scenery, and Rural Sports.

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Bottom Left Sector of Matrix

• Invented, but Personal

Real
Personal
Quality literature, sometimes adaptations, or
else original writing, with universal appeal and
meaning for everyman and everywoman
Invented
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(No Transcript)
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Personal, invented and more controversial

• The Little House series
• If Pa Ingalls had built his little house on the
  periphery of an antebellum southern mansion and
  Mrs. Wilder had described its Black slaves in
  the same terms she depicted the Osage Indians,
  her book long ago would have been barred from
  childrens eyes, or at least sanitized like some
  editions of Mark Twains The Adventures of
  Huckleberry Finn. Mrs. Wilders book even
  contains the popular variation of General
  Sheridans racist remark about what constitutes
  a good Indian.
• Dennis McAuliffe, Jr., Little House on the Osage
  Prairie

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Top Right of the Matrix

• Real Smileys!

Real
Recognizable stories, but unoriginal and shallow
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A real smiley?

• Wargin, Kathy JoThe Legend of the Petoskey
  StoneSleeping Bear Press, 2004
• The Legend of the Petosky Stone purports to be a
  legend about a Native American chief from a
  community on the eastern shore of Lake Michigan.
  It also purports to tell the origin of the name
  of the northwest Michigan town of Petoskey, as
  well as the transfer of that name to a fossilized
  coral that was made the official state stone.
  There is absolutely nothing factual or
  traditional in this book. The language
  pronunciation guides, the explanations, the
  translations, are all false.
• Review by Lois Beardslee, Oyate

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Bottom Right of the Matrix

• Invented smileys perhaps contrived?

Generic, unoriginal, impersonal, shallow
Invented
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A stilted example?

• This title presents a mishmash of Indian cultural
  snippets, alphabetically and in rhyme, paired
  with side panels that purport to offer more
  information about each topic. Abysmally written,
  with trite error-laden rhymes and boring yet
  confusing informational text, the poor attempts
  at iambic pentameter highlight this cockamamie
  piece of dreck . . .
• Review by Beverly Slapin in Oyate

Comment by Debbie Reese in her blog
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Functions of multicultural literature

• Rudine Sims Bishop
• provide knowledge or information
• expand how students view the world by offering
  varying perspectives
• promote or develop an appreciation for diversity
• give rise to critical inquiry
• illuminate human experience
• In Using Multiethnic Literature in the K8
  Classroom (ed. Harris, V.J. (1997)), cited by
  Debbie Reese in Native Americans Today, a
  ReadWriteThink lesson from NCTE and the
  International Reading Association

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Useful resources