Looking at the Big Picture in Multicultural Literature

The Beach article explains the difficulties high school teachers face with teaching multicultural literature in their classrooms. Most students have trouble recognizing and understanding the larger concepts of race, class, and gender in the works they read, focusing instead on the characters as individuals. While it is important to be able to relate to characters on an individual level, it is important for the teenagers to learn about the big picture as well. Multicultural literature is supposed to open the minds and widen the horizons of its readers on both a large and small scale. If students only get the smaller concepts out of the multicultural literature they read in school, half of its value and purpose is lost. When taught correctly, students not only are able to recognize the larger social concepts, but also may undergo changes in their personal views and beliefs about those concepts. This article shows how, over time, students’ attitudes towards race, class, and gender change when their class discussions help them read and think more critically. Any of the multicultural literature we’ve read can be applied to this article. Each text should be taught and discussed thoroughly so the students who read these books can both identify with the characters and recognize the larger forces working in the text, relating them to the society within and outside of the novel.