Liberal and Critical Muliculturalism Perspectives on Mulitcultural Literature

Home | Whiteness Studies | The Bonesetter's Daughter by Amy Tan | How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents by Julia Alvarez | Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri | A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J. Gaines | Works Cited | Appendix

Reading and Teaching Through the Lens of
Liberal Multiculturalism

Multicultural Literature

  • Represents voices omitted from traditional canons

 

  • A Window through which to view other cultures

 

  • A Mirror which reflects the reader's culture

 

  • Opens dialogue on diversity issues

 

  • Recognizes minority cultures left voiceless in the classroom

 

  • Advances social reform

 

Two theoretical perspectives exist for reading and teaching multicultural literature:

 

Liberal Multiculturalism

  • Studies different cultures to encourage respect and appreciation of diversity

 

  • Emphasizes commonality over differences in multicultural literature

 

  • Universal themes are found across diverse cultural backgrounds

 

  • Requires an etic understanding of multicultural literature

 

  • Rejects an "us vs. them" approach to multicultural literature and accepts a "we're all the same" association 

 

  • Universal themes represent a broader collective humanity and are valued over particular culture differences

 

Critical Multiculturalism

  • Studies the different social structures of power that exist within multicultural literature

 

  • Resists the universality of themes so that multicultural literature remains unique to a particular culture

 

  • Requires an emic understanding of multicultural literature

 

  • Embraces particular cultural differences in order to create equality in multicultural literature

 


daughter.jpg

garcia.jpg

interpreter.jpg

lesson.jpg

  



Multicultural Literature 308 Final