LITR 4332 American Minority Literature
Model Assignments

Final Exam Submissions 2013

Jasmine Summers

Sunday, May 05, 2013

 

American Minority Literature and how it can be a major role in teaching acceptance and understanding.

 

I am currently in my last semester to receive a degree in education for early childhood through twelfth grade, with an emphasis in special education. I feel the knowledge I have gained in this class over the semester would be excellent for me to implement into my future classroom. In such a diverse society, to be an effective teacher I must be able to engage and reach all students, and must include multicultural education within my curriculum in order to increase diversity and awareness. I believe the literary works that we covered helped to provide backgrounds to why things are sometimes the way they are, and maybe even why some people act, think, and interact in the ways that they do.

I believe discovering the backgrounds of certain groups, and then reading literature written by members of those groups gives you great insight into how they feel, what they have experienced, and what has defined them into who they are today as a cultural group. I think if many people took courses such as these, they would be much more understanding and tolerant of each other, and that is why I think it is important to take these concepts and place them into kid-friendly lessons to contribute to increasing diversity and awareness in my future students. For me personally, the narratives are the most revealing to me; reading about what a person is going through in detail, makes you almost feel what they experiencing, and it really sits on your mind and makes you think. Both of the slave narratives,  I think that both slave narratives Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave , by Frederick Douglass, and Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, by Harriet Jacobs are both important to read, because they give the reader and view into the beginning of African American culture in the United States, from the experience of a man and  his suffering under the institute of slavery, and as a woman, a double minority, because she suffers under slavery, but she also has issues  with being able to control and protect her own sexuality. For those that may be aware of slavery, but never truly stopped to think of the brutality of it, let alone read about in detail, line by line, it helps to open your eyes to what the roots are, or beginnings of this cultural group in this country. These beginnings are so disturbing and painful that they produces powerful enough effects to affect and cross generations and may contribute to shaping attitudes and thoughts of people within this minority group today.

Growing up, my history classes that I attended through the eighties and late nineties we learn about Native American tribes, their characteristics, and how they now live on reservations, we did not go into detail about how the country truly treated this group, the effects of this treatment, and how this treatment shapes members of this group today. The poem “Indian Boarding Schools: The Runaways”, by Louse Erdrich, is very descriptive and goes a great job in helping the reader understand the pain of someone stripping away your identity and making you into something you are not through forced assimilation. Another part of the poem that stood out for me that also helps to explain pain at having your land taken away is her comment about the railroad tracks being scars put into the land, indicating that European invention and settlement was physically and emotional to scarring to the people and their lands.

Bless me, Ultima, is another novel that helps reveal background information of a culture which helped to me to better understand that culture. Through the author’s use of symbols, mysticism, aspects of spirituality and traditional Catholicism, and odd dreams, I could better understand much of the culture that exists around me today. I understand the meaning of The Virgin of Guadalupe now, and although I have lived in Texas all of my life, I never knew that she was a huge symbol for Mexican Catholics. And although I was aware that many Mexicans and Mexicans Americans have indigenous roots, it still never occurred to me to make a connection between them sometimes practicing the spiritual aspects from their indigenous ancestors combined with Catholicism, such as using candles with the Virgin of Guadalupe on them when they are using them in healing or cleansing superstitions or “white magic” with rituals involving eggs that I have seen. I now understand that it is a practice of both of their cultures, Indian and European.                                                                                                                   
            Again, I feel the literary works we studied were very valuable in helping myself and others understand more about American history and some of the minority groups within our society. Learning a few paragraphs in a sometimes outdated history book and assuming you understand their culture and their experience is nothing compared to getting detailed accounts about events or personal narratives regarding experiences. I am not sure yet how I would adapt these ideas for the special education classroom, but I will definitely work on ways to implement the ideas I learned from this class into my lessons to promote better tolerance and understand of all groups.