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Language Arts Journal of Michigan Volume 19 Issue 1 Relevance

Article 9

2003

Making Meaningful Connections: The Role of Multicultural Literature in the Lived Experiences of Students Gina Louise DeBlase Wayne State University

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Recommended Citation DeBlase, Gina Louise (2003) "Making Meaningful Connections: The Role of Multicultural Literature in the Lived Experiences of Students," Language Arts Journal of Michigan: Vol. 19: Iss. 1, Article 9. Available at: https://doi.org/10.9707/2168-149X.1279

MAKING MEANINGFUL CONNEC­

TIONS: THE ROLE OF

MULTICULTURAL LITERATURE IN

THE LIVED EXPERIENCES OF

STUDENTS

GINA LOUISE DEBLASE

WAYNE STATE UNIVERSITY

Sitting in the back of an eighth grade

English classroom on an early winter day, I listened

while the teacher and students talked about the

Native American short story, "The Medicine Bag."

In the story, a Sioux great-grandfather carries on

tradition by passing down the family medicine bag to

his great-grandson. Because this eighth grade class

was part of a K-8 Native American magnet school,

the teacher's selection of this story seemed like a

good choice for connecting literature to the lives of

students. Multicultural literature has the potential to

help connect the world of the classroom with lives

our students live outside of the classroom. However,

in order for this potential to be realized, classroom

discussions of this literature must create space for

students to connect the literature to their own lives as

a primary means for creating significance and

understanding. For Native American adolescents, the search

for identity is often caught up in conflicting cultural

values between Native American and white society.

Mindful of the tensions this disparity causes in the lives of adolescents, Mary, the classroom teacher,

sought out multicultural literature, such as "The

Medicine Bag," in an effort to make literature relevant to the lives of her students. She viewed

literature as an opportunity for students to "bring

their own lives" to the texts and to see their lives "in

the context ofa community [i.e., the classroom

community]." As she told me in an interview, she

wanted her students to use literature as a tool for

"express[ing] how they felt."

LANGUAGE ARTS JOURNAL OF MICHIGAN

Research supports Mary's perspective and has documented how the use of multicultural

literature can help develop students' abilities to use

multicultural perspectives and knowledge to think

about literature, society (Miller & McCaskill, 1993;

Rios 1996; Rogers & Soter, 1997), and their own

lives. The diverse perspectives found in the voices

of cultural groups who have been excluded from

literary study can offer "alternative vantage points on

the world" (Greene, 1992). In this view, literature by

and about Latinos/a, African Americans, Native

Americans and Asians can provide teachers with

opportunities for meeting many goals of

multicultural education, where voices interact and

students reflect, think critieally, increase cultural

awareness, decrease ethnocentrism, and develop a

global perspective.

However, as I learned from observing and

listening to the students in this particular classroom,

in order for multicultural literature to engage

students in critical thinking and provide

opportunities to connect classroom life to the lives of

our students, it is not sufficient to simply introduce

multicultural literature into the classroom. We need

to think more deeply and critically about the ways

students' cultural, social, and community identities

and experiences interanimate with the reading and

teaching of multicultural literature in language arts

classrooms to create meaning. Because students

bring their own experiences and perspectives to the

reading of multicultural literature, using it in the language arts classroom requires attention to not

only what we teach when we select multicultural literature but also to how we teach it. What questions

do we raise for discussion? Do we engage and validate our students' experiences and prior

knowledge to help shape meaning? Do we find

space for multiple interpretations and understandings

of multicultural literature?

Kristy, a student in this particular eighth

grade classroom, provides an excellent case study for

thinking about these questions and issues. As part of

a research project, I had the opportunity of meeting

with Kristy several times to talk about her

experiences in this English class. As Kristy narrates

28

her thinking around these experiences, she provides

an important perspective of the multicultural

literature she read in her eighth grade English class

as she connected it to her life.

Kristy At the time of this study, Kristy was a

fourteen-year old Native American girl a member

of the Mohawk tribe which is part of the Iroquois

Nation. Tall, with long dark hair and braces she

dressed simply in blue jeans, tee-shirts, and sneakers.

In her eighth grade English class, she was usually

very quiet and seldom contributed to discussions.

She was, as she told me teachers in her school

expected her to be - "nice, polite, and smart."

Kristy thought of herself as a poet and, in

fact, she was very proud that a poem she wrote about

her grandmother had recently been accepted for

publication in a New York State student anthology.

She wrote her poem, "Ak Sot Ha, My Grandmother,"

in alternating stanzas of English and Mohawk,

perhaps as representative of her sense of living in

two worlds. Much of Kristy's time outside of school

was spent at the Long House, and she was taking

lessons to learn to speak and write the Mohawk language. Several years ago, Kristy and her friend

planted a traditional Native garden incorporating, as

she explained it to me, "the old ways" of planting and sowing and together they were learning the traditional Mohawk meaning behind each of the plants.

Clearly, Kristy's life experiences as a young

Mohawk woman were very significant and a primary social foundation to her sense of self. Because of this, I believed Kristy's perceptions about the Native

American literature she read in her English class

would be particularly relevant and revealing for what

they might suggest about the role of multicultural

literature in the lives of students of color. In one of

two interviews I had with Kristy, I asked her what

she thought about the Native American stories she

read in English class.

Kristy: Sometimes [they] seem kind

of fake and sometimes real. Fifty

percent. Sometimes I feel they're making fun of us. They don't know

any-thing. They're just talking stuff to

make us look bad. . .. They be

talking stuff they don't even know

about and it just makes ... me feel

bad... , And I feel angry because

they don't know anything about it

and there's stuff that wasn't Native

that I learned. Like there's always

two sides [to every story].

Kristy challenged the validity of the texts she

read in English class. Her sense was that sometimes

the stories were inauthentic saying that they "seem

kind of fake" and that "they don't know anything

about it." Further, these stories left her feeling "bad"

and "angry." However, my analysis ofthe teaching

of multicultural literature in this classroom suggests

that Kristy's sense of the stories she read was

directly related to the enacted pedagogy around the

reading and teaching of the literature.

Below is a segment of the discussion of

"The Medicine Bag." In this classroom excerpt,

students were taking turns reading the story aloud.

Mary would stop the reading at certain points to talk

about what they had just read. This segment begins

with Mary introducing the story, prior to the beginning of the reading.

Mary: How many people in here are learning the Native American traditions? Who are you learning them from?

Kristy: My friends.

Amanda (Mohawk female): My pastor.

Mary: That's right. You go to aNative American

church. Different cultures are probably so

integrated, we lose culture. Culture is what we eat,

how we dress, our values, the music we listen to.

The Native Americans had to retrieve their culture

because of it being systematically taken away. It's similar to Black Americans.

Damien (African American male): Kristy, what kind

of music do you listen to?

[Kristy does not answer Damien.}

SPRING/SUMMER 2003 29

Paul (African American male): Beating drums. Mary: You have tapes [of Native American music] don't you? Kristy: Yes. Mary: What's the stereotype of Native American men? Amanda: TalL Mean. Mary: How does he wear his hair? Amanda; Braids.

Mary: At this age, you get embarrassed about how

parent and family members look and what they wear.

[This is in reference to the boy in the story who is

embarrassed by his grandfather s Native American dress.]

[Mary asks a student to begin to read the story aloud

and the student does so. Paul interrupts the reading

to ask Kristy a question.]

Paul: Do you know what that means Kristy? [Referring to the words "Hau, Takoza" in the story.] Mary: No. Kristy knows Mohawk. This is Sioux. Continue reading Kristy.

[Kristy reads.}

Mary: So do Native Americans show affection in public? [referring to scene in the story where Mom

moves to embrace Grandpa and remembers that public displays of affection are unseemly to the

Sioux]. No. Is that true now? No. Now, Native Americans like to show affection very publicly.

[Mary calls on other students take turns reading

aloud.}

Mary: What might fainting be a foreshadowing of? [referring to scene in story when grandfather faints]

Paul: He's going to die.

Mary: Be aware that when something like this

happens, it usually signals something else is going to

happen.... Does anyone spend time with their

grandparents? [Many hands go up.] What a

wonderful gift! Why? Tina (European-American female): They're wiser.

30 LANGUAGE ARTS JOURNAL OF MICHIGAN

Kristy: You learn about the family. Mary: They pass on traditions, names. Grandparents accept and love you unconditionally. You don't have to make sure that you do the appropriate thing. Jared (African-American male): They just spoil you. Mary: Jared, continue reading. I'm giving points for reading.

[Jared reads.]

Mary: Note what it says about the oldest male child. Even though it's a matriarchal culture, this was

something that girls couldn't participate in. Tina: What if there were only girls? Mary: I don't know. I'll have to ask the Native

American teacher upstairs. Are there any customs in your families that you're uncomfortable with?

[No response.}

Mary: My grandmother prayed the rosary. We weren't comfortable but we did it to honor her. Sometimes there's tension. We'd say the rosary with her but not on our own. Although she thought we did.

[Mary reads the rest ofthe story.}

Mary: What do you think of passing customs down only to men? Paul: That's genderizing (sic) or something.

[Bell rings for the end ofthe period.}

Mary: We'll talk about that tomorrow.

In this excerpt of classroom discussion, there

were simultaneously several different purposes for

the classroom talk. From the beginning, Mary

attempted to acknowledge some students' expertise

and personal knowledge by asking who in the class

was learning about Native American traditions. Kristy and Amanda responded that they were

learning from friends and the pastor at church,

respectively. However, rather than asking the girls to elaborate on what they knew, Mary turned to a

definition of culture based on popular conceptions of

culture as food, dress, and music. She then opened

space for a potentially significant and meaningful

discussion when she remarked on the similar ways

both the Native culture and the African American

culture were both systematically "taken away."

Damien, an African-American boy, perhaps in an

effort to take up the connection that Mary had made

between these two cultures, asked Kristy what kind

of music she listens to. Kristy, though, did not answer to Damien. Similarly, later on, Paul, another

African-American boy, asked Kristy if she knew the

meaning of two of the Sioux words found in the

story. Mary spoke for Kristy when she responded

that Kristy knew the Mohawk language and not

Sioux. Mary then moved on to make a

generalization about Native displays of public

affection and any potential for Kristy, Damien, Paul,

and the other students to engage with multicultural literature in a dialogue that might help them to make

meaningful connections across their own experiences

was lost.

This same missed opportunity occurred

again around their conversation about the role of

grandparents in their lives. Further, at the end of the

conversation, Mary introduced the issue of gender bias in the story and Tina posed an interesting dilemma ("What if there were no girls?") around that issue which, again, was not taken up during this class session or on the following day.

Given the context for discussing

multicultural literature in this class, it is possible to construe Kristy's boredom, referred to earlier, as

caught up within the anger she said she felt about the

misrepresentation of Native peoples in the literature

and her inability to articulate what she knew and felt

about Native culture. Stereotypical representations

of Native peoples, such as the description of Native

men that Mary pointed out to the class, were, at

times, unwittingly reproduced in the teacher's own

talk. For example, during a review of vocabulary

words for a spelling test, Mary used the term "Indian

giver" to help clarify the meaning of the word

"rescind." So, while Mary did attempt to use the literature to help students think more deeply about

their own experiences and to offer a social critique of

racism, these goals for literature were not elaborated

or consistent throughout her teaching.

Consequently, Kristy was never able to

articulate her own critical and resistant reading of

these texts, based in her own experiences. Recall

that in my conversation with Kristy, she said, "I feel

angry because they don't know anything about it and

there's stuff that wasn't Native that I learned. Like

there's always two sides [to every story]." The point

Kristy felt so strongly about was that she had come

to understand that the culturally dominant versions

of history she had been taught were not, necessarily,

the only versions or even the correct versions. Here

is the rest of my conversation from my first

interview with Kristy:

Interviewer: Two sides to every story?

Kristy: Yeah! I used to like to read about Abraham Lincoln. But when I heard about what he did to

some of the Native American people, I kind of hated

him then. Like they don't tell you what he did.

They just tell you the good stuff really.

Interviewer: So how did you find out about what he

did? Kristy: I found out when we were protesting in Albany. We were protesting there and I was listening very closely. There were a lot of people there and it was noisy. And they were saying that they killed thirty-two Native Americans [during the time of Lincoln]> And that half of them didn't even do

anything. And at the end when they died, they

holded hands together and sang.

Through her experiences outside of school,

she had learned there are cultural and historical

stories about Native people left out of classroom

texts. At fourteen years old, Kristy's identity as a

young Mohawk woman has begun being shaped by

an evolving awareness of the ways in which her

identity is caught up in the larger sociopolitical

structure. Kristy sensed the missing voices and

perspectives (the other side of the story) in much of

SPRING/SUMMER 2003 31

this literature and it angered her and made her "feel bad."

As a consequence, the teaching of multicultural literature (in this instance, specifically Native American literature), rather than creating

space for multiple meanings and the opportunity to

listen to and learn from students' experiences,

reinforced the sense of polarized and oppositional

communities school community was set apart from

Kristy's Native American community. In other

words, there existed a disconnect for Kristy between

her experiences in school and the significance of her

lived experiences outside of school. Ironically, this result was the exact opposite of the teacher's

intentions for this literature. Recall that Mary said

she taught this literature because of the opportunities

it held for "students to bring their own lives" to the

text and to see their lives "in the context of

community. "

In fact, students' experiences outside of the

classroom directly impacted meanings they made

from representations in the literature as well as

classroom talk around the literature and the ways in

which they took up and, on occasion, resisted these

representations. For example, Kristy was deeply

involved with her Native way of life outside of

school. She had attended a protest rally in Albany

where she learned that Abraham Lincoln, someone

she used to admire, had been responsible for killing

Native peoples. She told me that her experiences

had led her to believe that the Native American stories she read in English class were "kind of fake and sometimes real. They're just talking stuff to

make us look bad. And I feel angry because they don't know nothing about it." Yet, because there was no space for the articulation of diverse experiences in

the classroom, she had little to say during class. Mary interpreted Kristy's silence as

reticence. In an interview, when I asked her to

describe Kristy her assessment is very revealing:

Mary: She is very poor. She has a learning disability.

She's just a typical Native American girl. Very

reticent. But I thought she wrote really

LANGUAGE ARTS .JOURNAL OF MICHIGAN

good papers. She really would not articulate verbally. Kristy isn't very bright.

Implications for classroom practice The teacher in this study understood the

importance of incorporating multicultural literature

into her curriculum as a way to make literature

relevant to the lives of her students. However, she

struggled with how to enable classroom discussion

about the literature in ways that allowed students to

bring their own experiences and understandings into

the exploration of meaning. As a result, she was not

able to achieve the positive goals she had for teaching the literature. In fact, as Kristy's story

demonstrates, the inadvertent silencing of her voice

and the voices of others contributed to Kristy's sense

of frustration. This suggests the need to develop specific strategies around the teaching of

multicultural literature that move students toward

connections in their own lives. Such strategies

involve allowing students to take charge of their own

learning and leaving space for them to ask the

questions and entertain the possible responses about

the literature they are studying. In this way, students

"own" the understandings they make about texts in a

way they do not when discussion focuses on the

teacher's questions designed to elicit specific and

factual information. When students ask the

questions and clarify their understanding, then meaning becomes student-generated while still allowing them to practice their text analysis skills. In the classroom, this can be accomplished in several

ways: 1. Form reader response circles where reading

is acknowledged as a social activity. In such a circle, students can pick one passage they find the most interesting or important,

explain why, and invite others to respond

(Daniels, 2002)

2. Form literature study circles. These are

different from response circles in that the

former is an expression of individual views

and the latter is focused more on

collaborative construction of meaning

32

around the texts (Cherland, 1994; Daniels,

2002).

3. Ask students to respond in writing to a

reading. Some prompts might include what

they liked, what they didn't like, what

confused them, and what they thought about

particular sections of the text.

Ifwe are better able to understand the many

dimensions of this relationship between multicultural

literature and students' outside lives, we are better

able to create the democratic classroom we envision

- a place for the articulation of lived experiences and

perceptions of those experiences both in and out of

schooL

Works Cited Cherland, Meredith. Private Practices: Girls

Reading Fiction and Constructing Identity.

Bristol, PA: Taylor & Francis, Inc. 1994.

Daniels, Harvey. Literature Circles: Voice and

Choice in Book Clubs and Reading

Groups.2nd ed. Portland, MA: Stenhouse

Publishers, 2002.

Greene, Maxine. "The Passions of Pluralism:

Multiculturalism and the Expanding

Community," Educational Researcher, 22.1

(1992): 13-18. Miller, Suzanne, and Barbara McCaskill, eds.

Multicultural Literature and Literacies:

Making Space jor Difference. Albany, NY:

State University of New York Press 1993.

Rios, Francisco, ed. Teacher Thinking in Cultural

Contexts. Albany, NY: State University of

New York Press, 1996.

Rogers Theresa. and Anna O. Soter, eds. Reading

across cultures: Teaching Literature in a

Diverse Society. New York: Teachers

College Press, 1997.

SPRING/SUMMER 2003 33