Adolescents and Multicultural Literature

We have discussed the importance of multicultural literature in many class periods already, and this was my focus point in the books that I reviewed. Multicultural literature is at its best when the novels not only reveal what life is like in different cultures, but also when the books are well written, contain historical elements, and also cultural symbols. All of these characteristics work together to educate students about not only different societies and cultures, but about the writing styles of multicultural authors.

The author of Esperanza Rising used a technique where she added spanish words with their interpretations in English. This is a characteristic found in many books written by spanish authors. I believe that it captures the essence of how hispanic immigrants hold onto their roots, but envelope themselves in the American culture at the same time. Through words the author is able to represent the characters struggle between two very different worlds and how they work to bring those worlds together.

Adolescents can greatly benefit from reading multicultural literature not only from the knowledge that they gain of other cultures, but also the appreciation and respect that they are able to attain for completely different lifestyles. The book Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe has the potential to open adolescents eyes to how hard life was for the Africans when Christianity was forced upon their culture. Most Americans would believe that bringing Christianity to the Africans was a great accomplishment as well as bringing civilization to them. Multicultural literature, however, teaches us that we should not look at the events in the novel from our perspective, but instead we must analyze them through the eyes of the African characters. In doing so the reader will understand the main points that the author is attempting to get across and the reader will understand how the natives believe such events affected their culture.