The Apartheid of Children’s Literature by: Christopher Myers
- "Recognizing oneself in a text, from the understanding that your life and lives of people like you are worthy of being told, thought about, discussed, and even celebrated" (Myers, 2014, p. 2)
- I belong to the Cherokee nation and being able to recognize myself in texts has been limited to the disney film Pocohantas and with the history books we read in school.
- Our history books are written by white people
- Native Americans portrayed as savages
- I did not read a book written by a Native American until I was in college.
- "Children of color are at best background characters, and more often than not absent, is in fact part of the imaginative aspect of these books" (Myers, 2014, p. 3)
- White-washing structure in literature
Critical Indigenous Literacies by: Debbie Reese
-"Unlearning stereotypical representations of indigenous
peoples and replacing harmful narratives with accurate info" (Reese, 2018, p. 390)
-Textbooks written by white people
-Teachers have choice over the books that they include in the classroom
-"The key ideas are to choose books that are tribally specific,
written by native writers, set in the present day, and relevant all year round,
keeping native peoples visible throughout the school year" (Reese, 2018, p.391)
-Riding the Trail of Tears Cherokee Nation & Georgia author Blake M. Hausman
Five Steps Toward Successful Culturally Relevant Text
Selection and Integration by: Sue Ann Sharma, Tanya Christ
-Culturally responsive teaching uses students cultural
knowledge and ways of being in the world to support learning, offers a way to
address the issue (Sharma, Christ, 2017, p. 295)
-Teachers should make an effort to get to know all of their students in order to teach based on each individual student.
-"Unfortunately the scarcity of texts for nonwhite students
is the norm. The lack of accessibility to culturally diverse childrens' literature in todays classrooms is an alarming injustice" (Sharma, Christ, 2017, p. 397)
-Ted Talk with Kandice Sumner
-Texts need to be relevant to students
References
Myers, C. (2014, March 15). The Apartheid of Children's Literature. The New York Times, 1-4.
Reese, D. (2018). Critical Indigenous Literacies. The SAGE Handbook of Early Childhood Literacy, 251-262.
Sharma, S. A., & Christ, T. (2017). Five Steps Toward Successful Culturally Relevant Text Selection and Integration. The Reading Teacher, 71(3), 295-307.
