The Development Of Multicultural Children's Literature With EMU Professor Sheila Most

Fri, 02/17/2006 - 1:49pm

When: November 5, 2009 at the Downtown Library: Multi-Purpose Room

Multicultural literature for children has blossomed in the twenty-first century, yet books about many large groups of ethnic Americans still remain underrepresented. This lecture by Dr. Sheila Most of Eastern Michigan University will discuss the beginnings of multicultural books for children, influences on their development, awards for multicultural children's books, the role of publishers, important issues in multicultural children's books, and continuing needs for the future. This event is held in conjunction with the exhibit 'The Future Of Our Past: The Evolution Of Multicultural Children's Literature,' on display in the Downtown Library lower lever glass cases through November 29.

Transcript

• [00:00:19.22] KEN RAYNOR: Now I'd like to welcome everyone to the library. My name is Ken Raynor, I work at the library in the Community Relations Department. We're happy to have with us tonight Professor Sheila Most from Eastern Michigan University, who will be talking about the development of multicultural children's literature -- which is also the theme of the current exhibit out in the lobby. With no further ado, I'll turn the program over to Sheila. Thank you very much.
• [00:00:46.37] SHEILA MOST: Good evening, it's nice to see so many of you, so many friends. Bless your hearts. I guess I want to talk a little bit about the children's lit program at Eastern first. We have a wonderful children's lit program. It's really unusual in that most studies of children's literature are housed either in the school of education or in a school of library science. And we were for years and years and years the only university in the country that housed it in an English department, where we actually study the works as literature. Now several other schools have done that, following our lead.
• [00:01:37.27] We don't have a children's lit major simply because there is no state test for children's literature. There's one for language arts, so we get a lot of our students in from Education. We do have a children's lit minor, and we have a group major in children's literature and theater drama for the young. We also have a very robust master's program, and we have a lot of graduate students coming to us from other countries -- especially the Asian countries. We've had them from Nigeria, Ghana in Africa. Right now we have a woman from the Philippines, one from India. We've had several from Korea, Japan, Taiwan. The main reason for that is children's literature is just really getting started in some of these countries. Of course they had oral tales, they had picture books for little ones, and they had stories of their national heroes. But they didn't have a real literature for children, and so a lot of these people who are interested are coming over to America, and then bringing back knowledge -- what they have. We have an undergraduate and a graduate course in multicultural children's literature. So if you're interested you're welcome to come sit in on any topic. I teach the graduate course, or at least until I retire. I'm teaching the undergraduate course now, and I will teach it again next term. So if anybody is interested and just wants to sit in we can just go around. That part won't be broadcast [INAUDIBLE] [LAUGHTER]
• [00:03:30.41] Before I get started also I'd like to distinguish between two terms -- multicultural and global. Some people do not make this distinction. Some people in a course in multicultural children's literature would talk about books published in Germany for German kids, and then translated into English and so forth. There's just so much now that I don't do that. I talk about multicultural children's literature as the literature of, about, and by the people who have come into our country and are trying to make their lives here. Sometimes this is quite difficult for them. Because I think there are special problems when you have cultures -- hopefully meshing, but most often there's a lot of conflict. And that's what I do in my course -- I talk about African-American, Asian-American, Latino, and Native American. Other people also include Arab-American, Jewish-American, and other things. If I'm talking about literature for children from other countries, I will call that global -- just to get our terms straight. You don't have to agree with me, just understand what I'm saying.
• [00:05:03.67] Since the beginning of children's literature in the 15th century, adults have written and selected books for children to educate them, to create a common cultural heritage, to inculcate the values of the dominant culture, to teach proper notions and beliefs about institutions such as moral and ethical standards, family structure, nationalism, political systems, and so forth. Only in the last 160 years or so have we also given books to children for enjoyment -- for entertainment. And only in the last 40 years -- or maybe 50 years -- have we even begun to give children culturally authentic, sensitive books about the lives of people who don't belong to the mainstream culture. So multicultural children's lit is a very, very new field. Children's literature is unique for many reasons, one of which is that it's written, illustrated, edited, published, and selected by one group of people for another group -- by adults for children. And adults can and do then suppress or censor topics, material, or books that they find offensive. And you find that there's really no underground children's literature. Kids are totally dependent on adults, and adults are trying to impress the children with their beliefs.
• [00:06:48.16] Books offered to children reflect the contemporary climate of the society. We often say that in historical fiction a book tells more about the period in which it was written than about the period in which it is set. And of course adults attempt to mold the next generation in their image by, among other things, including certain topics in the books for children while excluding others -- including certain characters, and excluding others -- and portraying racial and ethnic groups and individuals from the point of view of mainstream culture. Up until long after World War II, books for children portrayed almost exclusively mainstream Northern European-American middle class characters, values, attitudes, interests, settings, and lifestyles. The only African face I ever saw in a book when I was growing up was Little Black Sambo, and he's not even African-American.
• [00:08:02.64] So I'm going to start out with what happened before the 1960s, because in the 1960s a real change took place. Before the 1960s the history of publication in the US about minorities in our country, and about people in other countries, was one of stereotyping and distortion. Early portrayals of such characters from other countries usually showed them as exotic, primitive, savage, uncouth, untrustworthy, lazy, greedy -- you name it. And often cute, which is, I think, maybe the worst of all. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, when children's literature really blossomed, the focus of course was on white middle class America. Stereotypes of Native Americans, African-Americans, and Asians that had become popularized in adult literature, carried over into children's literature. Probably the best known example of this stereotyping of African-Americans in children's books is Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn. But there was always Helen Bannerman's Little Black Sambo. This is a copy of the original by Helen Bannerman, which I'll pass around so you get a chance to look at it. I could talk for maybe two or three hours just on the history of Little Black Sambo. The illustrations clearly show Africans, but it's supposed to be set in India -- maybe. There are tigers, and the mama cooks with ghee -- melted butter -- which is from India, not from Africa. Helen Bannerman, the author, actually lived in India -- well she lived in Africa, too. But the things that people found most offensive were the illustrations and the names -- Black Sambo. Sambo apparently had been a derogatory term for black men -- sort of like, hey boy. This kind of thing. And the mother is Black Mumbo, and the father is Black Jumbo -- mumbo jumbo, you can't even speak properly. However, the story is really rather enchanting and -- let met pass this around -- has been redone several times to try to get rid of the stereotyping. In fact Julius Lester and Pinkney did a wonderful edition of Sam and the Tigers -- and this is a black author and a black illustrator. They said that they remembered the book with love from their childhood, because it was one of the few books that ever portrayed a black child. Hugh Lofting's Doctor Dolittle had some rather stereotypical references to pygmies in there. P. L. Travers' Mary Poppins had references to pickaninnies. Roald Dahl's Willy Wonka at first had pygmies in it, and these were changed to the Oompa-Loompas. The early Nancy Drew books contained racist references.
• [00:11:36.52] We're sort of equal opportunity discriminators here, so we also discriminated against Native Americans. Laura Ingalls Wilder's book, Little House on the Prairie, has some interesting passages. This first one is Little House on the Prairie, and Laura and Mary are outside with their dog Jack. His is the dog. [READING FROM BOOK] His head was on Laura's knee, and she was talking to him when suddenly he stood up and growled a fierce, deep growl. The hair on his neck stood straight up and his eyes glared red. Laura was frightened. Jack had never growled at her before. Then she looked over her shoulder where Jack was looking and she saw two naked wild men coming, one behind the other on the Indian trail. Mary look, she cried. Mary looked and saw them too. They were tall, thin, fierce-looking men. Their skin was brownish-red. Their heads seemed to go up to a peak, and the peak was a tuft of hair that stood straight up and ended in feathers. Their eyes were black and still and glittering, like snakes eyes.
• [00:12:48.44] I don't think I'd like little Native American kids to read that unattended. This is another passage. [READING FROM BOOK] One day when Pa was hunting two Indians came. They came into the house because Jack was chained. Those Indians were dirty and scowling and mean. They acted as if the house belonged to them. One of them looked through Ma's cupboard and took all the cornbread. The other took Pa's tobacco pouch. They looked at the pegs where Pa's gun belonged. Then one of them picked up the bundle of furs. Ma held Baby Carrie in her arms, and Mary and Laura stood close to her. They looked at the Indian taking Pa's furs, but they couldn't do anything to stop him. He carried them as far as the door, then the other Indian said something to him. They made harsh sounds at each other in their throats, and he dropped the furs and then they went away.
• [00:13:41.44] This is one. The whole family is at dinner, and Laura wants to know about the Indians -- where they are. [READING FROM BOOK] Oh, I suppose they went west, Ma answered. That's what the Indians do. Why do they do that Ma, Laura asked. Why do they go west? They have to, Ma said. Why do they have to? The government makes them Laura, said Pa. Now go to sleep. He played the fiddle softly for awhile. Then Laura asked, please Pa can I ask just one more question. May I, said Ma. Laura began again, Pa please may I? What is it, Pa asked. It was not polite for little girls to interrupt, but of course Pa could do it. Will the government make these Indians go west? Yes, Pa said. When white settlers come into a country the Indians have to move on. The government is going to move these Indians farther west any time now. That's why we're here Laura. White people are going to settle all this country, and we get the best land because we got here first to take our pick. Now do you understand? Yes Pa, Laura said, but Pa I thought this was Indian territory? Won't it make the Indians mad to have to -- No more questions Laura, Pa said firmly. Go to sleep.
• [00:15:01.64] Pa is not quite as bigoted as you might think, because Pa does make the remark -- [READING FROM BOOK] that was one good Indian. No matter what Mr. Scott said, Pa did not believe the only good Indian was a dead Indian.
• [00:15:14.40] I won't pass this one around because there are no pretty pictures. There other early books about Native Americans that also have stereotypes that you may be familiar with. Lynne Reid Banks' The Indian in the Cupboard, and the sequel to that. The toys never really rise above the stereotype cowboys and Indians. Barrie's Peter Pan with Princess Tiger Lily and the Red Indian. Virginia Grossman's Ten Little Rabbits. It's one of those counting things -- ten little, nine little, eight little rabbits. Everything's fine, except the rabbits are dressed like Indians with a headband and a feather. Figure that one. And then this one, The Nose Book. This is by Al Perkins. It's kind of a cute, whimsical book. It's got caricatures of different animals, and the point is everybody has a different nose. I guess that's an anteater, and a parrot, and a dog, and I'm not sure what some of the others are. Everything goes fine, and we have all sorts of different noses. And then we have this one picture -- the only human in the entire book -- is an Indian, sitting there with his headband, and his feather, and a big honker nose. I've got that one marked so you can see it.
• [00:16:41.59] Asian-Americans also. Bishop and Wiese's The Five Chinese Brothers is still being published and still much beloved in many places. New York Public Library says it's a dramatic retelling of an old Chinese tale -- but it isn't, but anyway. You notice the five chinese brothers all look like they're suffering from jaundice, and they all look exactly alike. Now the story depends on their looking alike. Each one has a different gift. The first Chinese brother could swallow the sea. The second had an iron neck. The third could stretch and stretch and stretch his legs. The fourth could not be burned. And the fifth could hold his breath indefinitely. Well, one of the brothers gets in trouble with the Emperor and is going to be executed. So the brother says -- oh well, all right, I'll do this but would you please let me go home tonight and bid my dear old mother goodbye? Well all right, I guess I can do that for a dying man. So this brother goes home and -- the different methods of death are listed first. I think the first attempt was to drown the man in the sea. So of course the guilty man goes home, and the brother that he sends back -- who looks just like him -- can drink the whole sea in one gulp. And the Emperor then has to think of another way to execute him -- and each day a different brother comes back. The story does depend on all five Chinese brothers looking exactly alike, but then so does everyone else in the book. Sort of like -- well, I can't tell them apart.
• [00:18:29.20] Of course these books reflect their time -- reflect American isolationism, and reflect the dominance of white male authors and publishers. In the 1920s and 1930s, after World War I, there were some changes. World War I awakened in America the idea that there was something out there beyond the sea -- that there were other countries. And America became more cosmopolitan. Some books about other cultures were published for children then. Primarily collections of folktales. And there's some wonderful examples of folktales in the exhibit out there. But one of the difficulties here is that folktales were about all that was published, because they're the least threatening of all the multicultural genres. What should I say -- a dog is a dog is a dog. Doesn't matter if he's German, or French, or Spanish, or whatever. And the children in folktales act pretty much the same, too. There were some novels of realistic fiction published about people in other countries, but these portrayed almost exclusively stereotypes. The problem was that most of the authors were white authors, many of whom had no firsthand knowledge about the country. And there were hardly any stories of minority cultures in America. For example, in the 1930s only about a dozen children's books were published with African-American protagonists, and almost all of those were set on plantations. And most of the characters were portrayed as comical, lazy, happy-go-lucky slaves. It's almost impossible to find a picture book about an African-American child published before the 1960s. In the 1940s and 1950s you would think that there would be a further -- is there such a world as cosmopolitization? Anyway, you'd think that our horizons would extend even further because we now knew that there were countries to the west of us, in addition to the east of us.
• [00:20:55.25] During and after World War II, American interests turned back to our own country and to white middle class, European-American culture. These are the books that I grew up on, the books mostly from the 1950s. In 1965 Nancy Larrick published an article called The All White World of Children's Books, which appeared in Saturday Review. I see some of you are taking notes -- that was the September 11, 1965 issue if you want to check it out. This article was a critical force in alerting readers to the paucity of minorities in books for children, and also the distortion of those who did appear. What Larrick did in the study is she took all of the books published by the 63 largest mainstream publishers in the years 1962, 1963, and 1964. And then she went through them with a fine-tooth comb looking for black characters. If you had a classroom with one little black face in the back, she called that a black character even though it wasn't even a walk-on role -- it was just somebody sitting at a desk. So she was very liberal in deciding which books had African-American characters. She found that black characters appeared in fewer than 7% of all the 5,000 children's books published in 1962, 1963, and 1964. And more than half of those that did have a black character were set outside the United States -- maybe in African, maybe in the Caribbean, and so forth -- or before World War II. So there was nothing about contemporary black kids. The portrayals of black Americans in the books that had any, were filled with bias and stereotypes. Larrick's article was timely because it coincided with the civil rights movement, the rise of black activism in the late 1960s, and an increase -- especially this -- an increase in government funding for schools and libraries. If she had published that article 10 years before, people would have read it and said -- oh yeah, that's too bad. Let's write another one. It just came at the perfect moment. And these various factors caused publishers to start to accept more books by and about African-Americans, and to a lesser extent other minorities. Also influential in encouraging the writing and publication of multicultural children's books was a new award, the Corretta Scott King Award. It was established to honor an African-American author, and an African-American illustrator -- given by the American Library Association. And of course the awards are important because if a book can win an award it will sell a lot. And if it sells a lot, bookstores will want it, schools will want it, and libraries will want it. And then publishers will want to try to accept more books that might win this award and make them big bucks. I'm kind of bitter against publishers, I'm sorry.
• [00:24:33.18] Between 1973 and 1975 -- so about 10 years after Nancy Larrick's article -- the number of books featuring African-American children published by mainstream presses almost doubled. Well actually it more than doubled -- from less than 7% to more than 14%. This trend continued almost to the end of the 1970s. Some white authors began including an occasional black character in their books. Like Carol Fenner's Skates of Uncle Richard, or Cynthia Voigt's Dicey's Songs and Come a Stranger -- which moves one of the African-American characters into the central role. And a number of African-American authors and illustrators began to get their works published. Such as Alice Childress with A Hero Ain't Nothin' but a Sandwich. Rosa Guy -- who was originally from Trinidad -- who wrote The Friends and The Disappearance. Virginia Hamilton, who wrote everything -- Zeely, The House of Dies Drear, The Planet of Junior Brown, M. C. Higgins, the Great -- et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Walter Dean Myers, who wrote Fast Sam, Cool Clyde, and Stuff, The Young Landlords, Scorpions, and so forth. Mildred Taylor, who wrote the Song of the Trees, Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, and a number of other books. Sharon Bell Mathis -- A Teacup Full of Roses. And some illustrators also. Leo and Diane Dillon -- they're a married couple. Leo Dylan is African-American and his wife is white. Muriel and Tom Feelings, who are both African-American. And Jerry Pinkney, who was the illustrator in one of the retellings of Little Black Sambo taking out the offensive language and the offensive illustrations.
• [00:26:32.91] There was an increase in books by and about other minorities too, such as Asian- Americans, but they still lagged behind the books for African- Americans. So the African-American books got off the stage first and started to run. The others are trailing them. You would think, well gosh we made a wonderful beginning -- slapped society in the face and said look, you don't have any books for African-Americans. And by the way, Nancy Larrick's article was only about African-American kids in books, not about Asian-American or anyone else. So you'd think things are going well now -- we've got some really good authors and illustrators writing books, and in the 1980s and the 1990s things will get better and better. But that didn't happen. The 1980s and the early 1990s saw a retrenchment in this field. The 1980s to early 1990s saw few new authors published. The Virginia Hamiltons that already had made a name were still able to get some books published, but the newcomers couldn't do it. Even some of the established writers had trouble getting their works published. And many of the award-winning multicultural books were allowed to go out of print. I've wanted to teach some of the novels of Gary Soto, a Mexican-American author, and it's almost impossible. The darn things keep going out of print it. I suppose if I told my student -- I'll go on Amazon.com and buy yourself a used copy -- I could do it. But I can't go to the bookstore and say would you order me 40 of these, because I probably wouldn't get them.
• [00:28:23.81] The reasons for retrenchment were a decline in political activism, the conservative backlash of the 1970s and 1980s, and a reduction in government funding for multicultural books. According to Walter Dean Myers, an African-American author, publishing companies had never tried to develop markets for third world literature, as he calls it. Instead they had relied upon purchases made through great society government funds, and when these were phased out the publishers began to phase out third world books.
• [00:29:03.30] In 1990, US children's book sales -- not multicultural, but all of children's books sales -- had nearly quadrupled to nearly $1 billion. Just amazes me. And yet major publishers still remained basically uninterested in minority books. Publishers claimed that it was unprofitable to publish books about children of color, because children of color will read books about white children, but white children won't read books about children of color -- is what they said. The books about African-American children which publishers would buy at the time tended to be very preachy, heavy on history, and heavy on solemn topics. A lot of biographies of Sojourner Truth, Dr. Martin Luther King, the days of slavery, and so forth -- which are stories that need to be told, but they're not books that a kid would pick up and say, oh boy, is this fun. And this, I think, is why the 1999 publication of Christopher Paul Curtis' Bud, Not Buddy, was received with such acclaim. It won the Newbery, and just about every other children's book award that it could win. It's a delightfully funny story. If I gave you a 25 word summary, you'd think it was a boiling tragedy, as Bud would say. Great book. Have any of you read Bud, Not Buddy? Oh, you all know about -- I don't have to tell you about it.
• [00:30:51.58] Bookstores were and still are reluctant to stock books about the adventures of non-mainstream children, because they say few non-mainstream children shop in the bookstores. It's all about the almighty dollar. In the 1990s new concerns emerged, and they emerged primarily from the African-American authors and illustrators. These concerns dealt with the cultural authenticity of books. The authors started to say -- there a lot of books about my people out there written by white folks. What do you know about me? What do you know about my culture? There was a large controversy -- it must have lasted 10 years, and you'll still see it pop up every once in awhile -- is the author or illustrator a member of the culture that he or she is representing. The assumption is, if the author or illustrator is an insider, the book will be culturally authentic. Of course the corollary to that is, if the author or illustrator is not a member of the culture, the book will be culturally inauthentic. And of course, you can take this to extremes. You could say, maybe I shouldn't write a book about African-Americans -- I'm not African-American, I don't know much about their culture. I forgot what I was going to say. Let's see. Well that one's gone, excuse me -- senior moment. It will come back. I'll call you all at two in the morning to let you know what it was.
• [00:32:44.44] But what has to be done is if you are not a member of the culture, then you do need to do a lot of research and a lot of talking, a lot of listening, to find out what is authentic. Oh, I know what I was going to say -- see I told you it would back. It goes to ridiculous extremes. So if I say, I'm not black so I can't write about black people -- then could you also say, I'm not a man so I can't write about men. Because I really don't know the inner life of men, I've never been one. Could you say -- I really can't write about the Irish Potato Famine, because I wasn't around. And you can get ridiculous about this. So I think most people today say -- yeah, people can write about characters from other cultures, but they got to inform themselves pretty well.
• [00:33:48.90] In the 1980s, when the mainstream presses were not accepting very many of new books written by multicultural authors, a number of alternative small presses arose. Many of those have failed, but some have prospered. And they kind of carried the burden while the mainstream presses were shutting out the multicultural books. By the end of the 1990s, multicultural literature for children had finally rebounded and passed even the expansion of the 1970s. And it's continued to the present day -- just so that you all don't get depressed. The reasons for that are -- well there are many -- but some are the major demographic changes that occurred during the 1980s, increased immigration, larger audiences, increased interest in globalization and multiculturalism, and so forth. Also it depended on the success of some of these small presses and their authors. New minority authors and illustrators arose, and the almost impossibly high selection standards of the 1970s were relaxed. Publishers would now accept first books by writers that were not proven, so they could kind of get their feet wet in the business. Very often the first book is not the best book that you ever write, so this gave them a chance to try out writing and improve their techniques. There was also an increase in and demand for multicultural books for schools. And publishers now feature multicultural books in their catalogs. I suppose ideally we shouldn't even need a multicultural children's lit course, they should just all be blended right in the other literature courses. But we haven't come that far yet, unfortunately.
• [00:36:01.48] So things have gotten better every year since. But the Native Americans, Asian-Americans, and Latino-Americans continue to be badly underrepresented, although the situation is improving. In the last five years or so, there's starting to be some books about Indian-Americans -- not American Indians, but Indian-Americans. Just a few books by Korean-American authors. There are still very few, if any, books by and about Filipino-Americans, and yet this was our fastest growing group of Asian immigrants from 1970 to 1980. Dominican-Americans -- not much. Central-Americans, Southern and Central Asians -- not much. Minority authors can still have difficulty getting published, and one of the reasons is the lack of minority editors and publishers in the mainstream publishing houses. They don't have the concern for these books that a person of color would have. And I think maybe once these positions are filled by persons of color, we're going to have more multicultural books published.
• [00:37:25.65] So today you're going to find quite a number of wonderful African-American books, fewer Asian-American books, fewer still Latino-American, and fewest of all, Native American. For some reason the European-Americans pretty much steer clear of writing African-American books now. I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but they took a trouncing from the African-American community and are still licking their wounds. They pretty much don't write about Asian-Americans, not much about Latino-Americans -- but for some untold reason they still think they can write about Native Americans. And they mix up cultures -- they get the wrong dress on the people, they have them living in the wrong kind of dwellings, and so forth. So the Native American books are really lagging. If you want to read a really neat Native American book, though, Sherman Alexie published his Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian just a couple of years ago. He was at Eastern last year speaking -- and it was during my graduate night class -- and I talked to about three students, because they all took off and listened to Sherman Alexie. And I didn't feel that I really could do this because it wasn't -- no it wasn't a multicultural class, it was a myth class -- and I didn't feel I could really let the class out. Anyway, this is a wonderful book. It's about a young Native American boy on a reservation -- it's really very autobiographical -- on a reservation in Washington State, who has an opportunity to go off the reservation to a really good white high school. And he is quite a cartoonist, too, and there are all sorts of wonderful cartoons in there that he's drawn. And there's one where this child is split right down here -- and on this side he's got all the features of a Native American, and on this side all the features of a white child.
• [00:39:42.38] So that is the situation that we find now. If any of you are interested, I can direct you to some books. I didn't bring any more tonight because I didn't know what interests there'd be. If you're interested in our programs and our courses, I'd be happy to send you the website. My email address is just smost -- s for sheila, m, o, s, t -- at emich -- Eastern Michigan -- dot edu. I'd be happy to hear from you -- I have no life. [LAUGHTER] So I tell my students, go ahead and call me at home. You're the most exciting thing in my entire life. Please feel free to email me, ask me for references or courses we're offering, and so forth.
• [00:40:41.27] Good, so that's the end. Does anybody have any questions?
• [00:40:51.35] SPEAKER 1: Hi, Sheila. This isn't really a question. It's just an example that I thought of while you were speaking of early children's literature that had stereotypes. And I'm certain you know this example, but when I was a little girl my mother read me the Raggedy Ann and Raggedy Andy books. And I loved them. So I saved them, and when I had a little girl I took them out and looked at them, and I thought -- oh my gosh, they have a black maid called Dinah, and she speaks with this really bad dialect. And I could not read them to her.
• [00:41:26.10] SHEILA MOST: I didn't remember that either.
• [00:41:27.20] SPEAKER 1: Oh, it's awful. The stories are so sickly sentimental that I was just kind of revolted at them. But as a child I thought they were wonderful.
• [00:41:39.12] SHEILA MOST: Oh, that's interesting. I'll have to look at Raggedy Ann and Raggedy Andy. I remember my father, who was born in 1909, had a Raggedy Ann doll and loved that thing. He would talk about Raggedy Ann and Raggedy Andy a lot. So it must have been popular even back in the real early 1900s.
• [00:42:04.15] SPEAKER 2: Sheila, I'm wondering if you have suggestions for how there might be increased use of multicultural youth books in schools -- and I'm thinking K through 12.
• [00:42:18.01] SHEILA MOST: I think they're doing a pretty good job, but one of the troubles is whenever you add a book to a curriculum, something else has to fall out. And they're having all sorts of arguments now as to -- we can't throw out Shakespeare to bring in Bud, Not Buddy. This kind of thing. So the educators are working on trying to balance this and bring in multi -- one of the suggestions that I read recently was, don't do it all in one year. You know maybe 3rd grade is Indian grade, and we'll look at books by and about Native Americans. And maybe 4th grade will be -- oh, I don't know what -- African-American year. And fifth grade will be -- and this would almost work out better, because the trouble is you add a book and you've got to take another one out. You've only got so many hours, as all the teachers know.
• [00:43:21.54] Anybody else? Any other questions?
• [00:43:25.83] SPEAKER 3: I was interested in books about race relations that came out and got Newberys -- namely, Maniac Magee and Holes. And Holes at least was made into a movie. Have you found anything along that line for the other groups -- the Asians, the Native Americans, the Latinos?
• [00:43:59.12] SHEILA MOST: No, I haven't. Once again, the other groups are lagging behind the African-Americans. But I wouldn't be surprised if it would come out -- if you would get something like that. But I don't know of anything.
• [00:44:12.90] I did think of something. Marie G. Lee -- L, e, e -- is a Korean-American author who's written about the Korean-American experience from a number of different angles, which I think are kind of interesting. In one -- which I just talked today -- there's a family. A mother, father, and twins -- I think they're freshmen in high school, so they're old kids -- who live in Los Angeles. They get along fine -- they have the Korean Church, they have a little grocery store, the daughter has just made the Young People's Orchestra, the son's on the soccer team. Everything's fine. But the father's brother has been a real bum, and he was in Iron River, Minnesota, where he set up a nice drug business and was run out of town. And the father, being responsible for his brother as Asian-Americans can be, decided he was going to go repair the damage that his brother -- named Bong, of all things -- had caused. So he packs up the family in their station wagon and moves to Iron River, Minnesota. And of course there are no other minorities in town. There's one American Indian young man, but he lives on the reservation so he doesn't even -- he comes into town. There are not even any other minorities, let alone Korean-Americans.
• [00:45:54.05] Then she writes another book where a Korean girl had been adopted by a white American family. And she grew up looking Korean, but inside she was white. She's in 3rd grade, I believe, and at one point another boy comes to school from Korea -- fresh off the boat. The teacher decides since this little girl is Korean she surely will be able to help this little boy. And she's saying -- I don't know anything about him. I'm not Korean. I'm American. So it's a little Korean-American girl who wasn't Korean, and who had to learn about her own culture.
• [00:46:43.95] There's another one that she writes -- Finding My Voice -- where a young Korean-American woman goes to college -- one of the Ivy League schools -- and her roommate is an African-American. She's Korean-American -- her roommate's an African-American girl -- and to make a long story short, they each get boyfriends of their ethnicity, but the African-American boyfriend was really active in trying to bring some performer onto campus who was very much against the Koreas. It was the time of the Korean-African American riots in Los Angeles. And of course the Korean-American girl decides to side with her boyfriend, who was saying don't bring this guy to campus because he's going to cause all sorts of racial disharmony. And this breaks the girl and her roommate up, because she has to choose between her roommate -- whom she really likes -- and her boyfriend who's of her ethnicity. This book does talk about racism between the different ethnic groups, which I think is kind of interesting.
• [00:48:14.45] SPEAKER 4: [INAUDIBLE] Linda Sue Park, isn't she someone who does Korean-American things rather well?
• [00:48:23.44] SHEILA MOST: Mostly Korean?
• [00:48:25.46] SPEAKER 4: No, it's not. I just read something about the silkworm project.
• [00:48:33.40] SHEILA MOST: OK, I haven't read that one.
• [00:48:34.67] SPEAKER 4: This little girl and her friend, who I think is white, decide to do this project with the silkworms -- and actually make silk, make thread, and all of this stuff -- but they need a mulberry tree. And the only person in town that they finally find one beautiful mulberry tree, belongs to an African-American man. And so they meet him and they go there, but the Korean-American mother is a little leery of this man. It's very, very well-written. I think Linda Sue Park is a wonderful writer from a young -- her picture books of -- what is it, Delicious and Every Language or something.
• [00:49:31.54] SHEILA MOST: Thank you for putting me on to that one. I had not read it. Another thing that's happening now is that there's more diversity within the books by and about African-Americans. Before African-American families in the books were all alike, and now you have -- obviously families are not all alike -- and so now you're beginning to have books showing different kinds of African-American families, with different economic levels, and different dreams, and different places where they live, and so forth. So there's more diversity within the diversity, and probably more diversity between the minority, too.
• [00:50:23.93] As I tell my classes, if all the minorities could get together they'd be the majority. But of course this is one of the things that stereotyping does. It's a tool by the dominant culture to try to keep the different minorities sort of fighting and keep them from cooperating. Because that keeps the dominant white culture dominant.
• [00:50:52.14] One of the neatest things that has come out of my classes is toward the end of the semester some of the European-American students come up to my desk and say -- I feel deprived, I don't have a culture besides American. My name's Polish, but I know nothing about -- I don't know any Polish words. I eat punchki, and that kind of stuff -- but that's about as Polish as I get. Or, I feel really like I'm lacking something. And I think that's a wonderful realization on their part.
• [00:51:31.54] The other thing that happened the other night. One of my graduate students, who's African-American -- we're well into the Asian-American unit now. We start African-American and then Asian-American. And she came up to me at break and she said -- I never knew, why didn't they tell me? Why didn't they ever tell me? And she looked devastated. And I said, [UNINTELLIGIBLE] what do you mean? What didn't you know? And she said, they never told me that other people suffered that way -- that there was racism against other groups. And it provides an understanding between the cultures, which I think is very, very important. I'm nattering on.
• [00:52:15.40] Does anybody else have any questions?
• [00:52:20.76] KEN RAYNOR: We'll wrap it up with that, then. Thank you very much, Professor Most, for your lecture. SHEILA MOST: Thank you.
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