Daily Archives: December 5, 2020

Multicultural literature

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The module reading, Cai (2002), presents three views on what constitutes multicultural literature. The first is that in order to be considered multicultural, a text must include and represent as many cultures as possible, encompassing all cultures of the world equally. That is, a traditional tale from the UK is just as multicultural as one from Africa. In this view, the power relationships, the oppressed and the oppressor, the marginalised and the mainstream, are not taken into account. A literature set could not be thought complete unless both dominant and minority cultures were represented. Another view is that multicultural literature should focus on racial differences. This does not acknowledge that gender, sexual orientation, age or any other element of a person or community might influence the culture. I do not believe that this is the case, however, I can see that decisions as to what constitutes “culture” and what does not is up for debate. The third view is that all books, collectively, represent multicultural literature. This is the view with which I most agree. While there may be some texts that do explore in depth many different cultures, or perhaps the intercession of at least two, it is the collection as a whole that must be “multicultural”. Texts which explore, describe and celebrate all cultures and walks of life should be represented with in a collection. This should incorporate texts that explore the clashing, melding, crossing, dividing and accepting of people from different cultures when they come together. I believe that it is not just ethnic, religious or national difference that contributes to culture, but that age, sexual orientation, gender, privilege (or lack thereof) etc combine to influence and create sub-cultures and all should be represented in the collection. Where the terms “multicultural” and “diverse” meet and crossover, I am not sure. And I am not sure it really matters.

 

 

 

Chapter 1: Defining multicultural literature (pp 3-18) in
Cai, M. (2002). Multicultural literature for children and young adults: Reflections on critical issues. ABC-CLIO, LLC.

Lived experiences in Indigenous literature

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My primary school library has, I believe, most of the texts listed in threads about this topic: Baby Business, Young Dark Emu, Jandamarra, Sorry Day, Wilam etc. But what we lack, and what I am finding quite hard to find, is literature exploring the everyday lived experiences of students like mine. We have only one Aboriginal student in our school at the moment and her experience is very different to what we see reflected in a lot of the indigenous literature available. It was very interesting to hear Anita Heiss talking about this in the modules this week.

I think our collection offers a good range for supporting the cross-curricular priority and for including Aboriginal perspectives in the curriculum more broadly, but I notice they tend only to come out during NAIDOC week and that’s about all. This week, as I was sharing Jandamarra with year 5, an very valuable discussion occured because many of the students could not connect “warrior” with the Aboriginal people. They asked, “What were they fighting for?” It was not meant in a derogatory way, many of these students are recent immigrants and have no real concept of Aboriginal history or culture, but it pointed out to all of us in the room that we need to do much better in terms of helping the students to really understand the issues at play.

In my role as TL, I need to promote more of these resources around planning time and help our teachers to include Aboriginal perspectives more effectively. I don’t think it is too much to do with not having the resources available, more that they don’t know what to do with them.