NCTA article: Objectively reading multi-cultural literature

I completely understand the concerns of the article. As a teacher who has primarily taught students of cultures other than my own, I've always felt excited about bringing multicultural literature to my class. However, I also feel like anything I may present along with the story, any interpretation I present, may be and probably is very culturally biased. This seminar has helped me understand themes in Asian literature, and I feel more confident in presenting some of these themes to my students. However, there are subtle, cultural practices and norms that will never be made explicit to someone outside the culture.

I think the important thing to remember is to learn about the historical influences, as well as cultural norms when pointing out themes in multicultural literature. It doesn't hurt to read reviews of the book online or find lists of multi-cultural books published by respected universities and educational institutions. Basically, like all good teaching, do your research first, before sitting down with kids and presenting unsubstantiated claims and biases.

I've had the same experience when I taught at a middle school in the west LA area. The student body population is 60% white and the 40% are minority, I beeing a Latina and teaching in that environment many kids taught that I was a parent, somebodys sister or and aid. When they found out that I was their teacher they started to question me, and test me. They wanted to know where I went to school what I studied, and the Latino students told me that they've rarely see a hispanic teacher and let alone a Female Latina. I found out that being culturally aware is necessary because many kids and even adults know stereotypes, knowing more about a culture makes you open minded, and it helps to break some stereotypes that the young kids are growing up with.

Another issue I have noticed with my students regarding Asians is their failure to understand variations among Asian people and culture. We had a good discussion of this in one of my honors classes. The way I was able to get the idea of cultural variation accross was to ask them what they did not like about how white people think of Latinos. Right away students complained that whites think all Latinos are Mexican, while many of my students come from various Central American countries. This led to a discussion of variations among Asian (and whites as well). It also raised the issue of why we don't really have the same variation among African-Americans and how the strong cultural differences among Africans were largely destroyed by forced mixing during slavery.