Disrupting and Dismantling the Dominant Vision of Youth of Color (original) (raw)
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Discussions of urban fiction and multicultural literature hold great potential for transforming the practice of beginning English teachers in diverse school settings. In this article, the authors, both teacher educators of color, present two case studies of preparing middle-and secondary-level English educators from a diversities perspective. Given continued conversations in the field of English education on how to best prepare new teachers for working effectively with diverse student populations, the authors present situated representations of how teachers' critical encounters with literature can shape their learning to teach processes from the university classroom to their field experiences. Both case studies presented have a particular interest in the critical theoretical and pedagogical insights developed by preservice teachers through their discussions of children's and adolescent literature that deals with diverse, urban, and multicultural perspectives. In doing so, these case studies reposition urban fiction and multicultural literature as transformative tools for teacher education curriculum.
Contemplating and Extending the Scholarship on Children’s and Young Adult Literature
Journal of Literacy Research
To commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Journal of Literacy Research, this article reviews the trajectory of a particular line of scholarship published in this journal over the past five decades. We focus on African diaspora youth literature to contemplate and extend the ways in which literacy researchers carry out textual analysis research of diverse children's and young adult literature. We situate this line of scholarship (and its trajectory) within the broader literacy field and then narrow to a focus on diverse books. Next, to turn our gaze as literacy researchers forward to the future, we present our own critical content analysis of a young adult text collection. Our analysis incorporates postcolonial theory and a youth lens to interrogate how underlying ideologies identified within the novels support, refute, or reconstruct dominant beliefs about Black girls. We end with a set of implications for researchers interested in theorizing about or further investigating diverse children's or young adult literature. Keywords African American children's literacy, critical content analysis, young adult literature Serving as a school counselor in an ethnically diverse city in the Northeastern United States, D.C. (second author) learned that a number of Ethiopian and Jamaican girls disliked being mistaken for "Black American." African American girls, therefore, surmised that those groups thought they were "too good" to hang out with "regular Black girls." 1 Some of the Afro-Caribbean and African American girls spoke negatively about the girls from Ghana and Nigeria, commenting on their dress, speech, and bodies. In turn, the girls from West Africa used words such as "cotton pickers," in hushed tones, to label the other groups of Black girls. Despite each group's desire to separate itself from the others, many on the school's staff perceived them as indistinguishable, referring to them collectively as "the Black girls."
Expanding the Canon: Classic African American Young Adult Literature
The ALAN Review
Expanding the Canon: Classic African American Young Adult Literature T here are a number of young adult books gener ally considered to be traditional and contempo rary classics. 1 A few examples include The Out siders by S. E. Hinton (1967), The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier (1974), Annie on My Mind by Nancy Garden (1982), and Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson (1999). Harris (1990) writes, "Unfortunately, liter ary canons tend to include a preponderance of books that reflect the experiences, values, perspectives, knowledge, and interpretations of Whites, particularly Anglo-Saxons" (p. 540). Rarely are books that are written by and about Af rican Americans, or by other groups of color, referred to as classics in the children's and young adult literary canon, "even though many exhibit extraordinary merit, expand or reinterpret literary forms, or provide a forum for voices silenced or ignored in mainstream literature" (Harris, 1990, pp. 540-541). For instance, in a study that aimed to determine the favorite classics of students in the upper elementary grades, Charlotte's Web (White, 1952) was selected as the top choice (Wilson & Abrahamson, 1988). We were not able to identify any of the other titles (e.g., Heidi [Spyri, 1885] and The Hobbit [Tolkien, 1937]) that were pre sented to the children to vote on as their favorites as 1 While it is commonplace for secondary teachers to share classic adult books (e.g., A Tale of Two Cities [1859] by Charles Dickens, Moby Dick [1851] by Herman Melville, and The Great Gatsby [1925] by F. Scott Fitzgerald) with high school students, this article focuses on literature cre ated specifically for a young adult audience.
2016
Despite the fact that we teach English education at two very different geographically and socioculturally situated universities—one a mid-sized rural Midwestern university and the other a large urban Southern university— we discovered through extended dialogue that we both aim to make our methods courses safe spaces in which preservice teachers can consider and (de)construct their own identities as readers while preparing to teach literature in secondary schools across the United States and beyond. We realized that to create lifelong readers in those schools, we should begin with our preservice teachers’ identities as readers, knowledge of intertextuality, and considerations of reading as a social practice before asking them to become English teachers who connect their students to texts and to the world around them. And to do this, we use young adult literature and culturally responsive teaching. Notwithstanding the prevalence of adolescent fiction in popular culture (e.g., Harry Po...
2014
As educators and administrators continue to struggle with the low literacy proficiency rates in this country, a new genre of literature is making its way into the classroom. Young Adult Literature, such as the works of John Green, are becoming a more familiar sight inside the classroom. However, some parents, educators, and members of the school districts are not happy with this new trend. In the last year, alone, young adult books have been challenged hundreds of times in hopes of getting them removed from the classroom and library. I believe that these books need to stay in the schools, though. Through this thesis, I explore the possibility of Young Adult Literature having more of a presence in the secondary English Language Arts classroom in order to increase motivation, engagement, social awareness, and literacy rates. In this research project, only 13% of 11th and 12th grade English Language Arts students reported enjoying the reading they were currently assigned, despite their statement that they enjoy reading, in general. These books do not lead to motivated and engaged readers. By incorporating Young Adult Literature into the standard curriculum of an English Language Arts classroom, teachers can enhance motivation, engagement, and productivity. Students can continue to learn the same literary concepts and techniques, in addition to being exposed to current social problems. When Young Adult Literature is brought into a classroom, an environment is created in which students can learn what they think, why they think it, and how to respect the differing opinions of others. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Thank you to all four of my wonderful committe members. Dr. Jeffrey Kaplan, I appreciate your short and sweet advice on all of the persisting questions that I had. Thank you for helping me pursue my interest into the creative mind of John Green. Dr. Sherron Killingsworth-Roberts, thank you for always having a smile and a hug ready for me whenever I visited your office. Your enthusiasm and motivation was never-ending throughout this project and I appreciate it so much. Dr. Elsie Olan, thank you for raising questions I did not even know existed. Your excitement and passion for literature pushed me to learn more than I ever planned to. Dr. Karen Verkler, thank you all of your sage advice when it comes to writing a thesis. I will never forget all of the helpful tips you taught me. I would also like to thank Professor Paul Corrigan and Dr. Alisa DeBorde of Southeastern University. Professor Corrigan, I would never have been able to do this without you forcing me to spend an entire semester researching and writing about one social problem. Thank you for showing me my love-hate relationship with research papers. Dr. DeBorde, thank you for reaffirming my belief that I am supposed to be an English Language Arts teacher. Your advocacy and passion for Young Adult Literature is what inspired my love for the subject and led me to this project.
Black Adolescent Girls' Use of Literary Practices to Negotiate Boundaries of Ascribed Identity
Journal of Literacy Research, 2005
This qualitative study highlights the interconnectedness of literature, literacy practices, identity, and social positioning within a framework of a common enactment of multicultural education: adding literature by and about people of color to the language arts curriculum. The study provides a window on the meaning-making of six 16-year-old Black girls as they studied The Bluest Eye (Morrison, 1994) in their high school English class. Drawing primarily on group and individual interview data, this research shows participants spending little time analyzing the literature per se. Instead, spurred by incidents in the novel, they used the text as a launching point from which they analyzed their own life experiences. Socially positioned as young Black women, participants have found that they are expected by people in their school, community, and outside their community to behave in particular ways as a reflection of their assumed values and ways of being in the world. They also have exper...