Complete sample essay for Essay 1 assignment

Multicultural Literature in the Classroom

Hermann Hesse said, “Without words, without writing and without books there would be no history, there could be no concept of humanity.”  The American immigrant narrative has sought for years to record the struggles and achievements.  The impediment we find ourselves facing is the lack of consideration that these narratives receive.  Is there any true democracy for those who find their voice ignored or squelched?  It is the educator’s duty to include a wide range of multicultural literature to increase our students’ educational field as well as feelings of self-worth and tolerance for other races and cultures.

The common complaint of educators is a lack of time, and while this is too often true, we cannot let this be an impediment to this goal.   In my school district, we teach a regimented curriculum and this very seldom includes works from authors outside of the dominant culture.  The teachers cannot vary from this curriculum for fear of their job safety, and it is understandable that they do not highlight the works of authors such as Toni Cade Bambara and Louise Erdrich.  It is up to school board to choose to value the education of all the races in our school district, not just the few that are represented at the council table. 

The immigrant narrative is quickly becoming a much more familiar story for many Americans than the story of the dominant culture.  Fewer and fewer people can relate with the Exodus story or Bradford’s Of Plymouth Plantation; this is simply not the tale of their lives and has no reflection on them.  Stories like Gary Soto’s “Like Mexicans” and James Baldwin’s No Name in the Street are often more easily identified with in our increasingly multicultural landscape.  The school district that I teach in has 40% Hispanic, 5% African American, 5% Asian American, and 40% Caucasian.   It is essential to make education personal and authentic to each individual within our walls.  Our students should not only to learn to analyze and evaluate literature.  Our job exists to make sure they walk away from our classroom with an understanding larger than they came in with.  If we are to broaden their scope of reality, then taking just taking samples from the provided canon is not going to suffice anymore.

            Others will complain that multicultural literature separates the cultures, but if we teach these pieces in thematic units, the uniting values will conquer the differences. For instance, the only piece of literature usually used to teach tolerance is the Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech.  There is not denying that this an outstanding piece of literature with which you could begin to talk about the civil rights movement, but it is certainly not the only example that we are provided.  Chitra Divakaruni’s “Silver Pavements, Golden Roofs” would be ideal to teach the effects of discrimination and prejudice.  In this account, a young woman’s romanticized version of America is shattered when she encounter glaring racism that comes in the form of one word uttered by a street boy, “Nigger.”  Another excellent story, “In American Society” by Gish Jen, reveals an Asian American family’s encounter with an upper middle class structure that does not understand nor abides dissimilarity.  A wealth of literature exists that would augment not only the student’s sense of self but awareness of other’s humanity as well.

The universality of emotional and physical isolation is another subject matter that could be effortlessly taught with the Immigrant Narrative.  This feeling of separateness, aloneness is one with all young men and women can identify.  It seems that when we are gaining a sense of who we truly are, we are also realizing how separate our feelings and emotions are from everyone else.  An excellent novel that would address this issue is Anzia Yezierska’s  Bread Givers in which a young woman struggles to discover who is she is in a world in which she feels that she does not quite fit in.  It would be great tool to discuss her evolution from feeling so disconnected from the “Girls, like gay-coloured butterflies, whirling in the arms of young men,” to the confident adult who is told by the college dean, “But you, child-your place is with the pioneers.  And you’re going to survive.”  This point in the story is not merely a moment of triumph for Jewish-American readers but for every person who has ever divided from “the others.”  In addition, Judith Ortiz Cofer’s “Silent Dancing” encompasses feelings of remoteness not only from the dominant culture but from one’s own people as well.  Richard Rodriguez’s Hunger of Memory depicts this sentiment as well and would be a perfect book to read in classroom with limited English proficiency and second and third generation Hispanic immigrant students. 

            Themes like love, importance of family, subjection, and numerous others can all be touched upon by multicultural literature.  Through these lessons, we are giving our students more than just lessons on different cultures and how they are distinct, but we are teaching them we all carry with us similar values and truths that can unite rather than divide us. [KM]