Teaching Culturally Sustaining and Inclusive Young Adult Literature

Critical Perspectives and Conversations

R. Joseph Rodríguez

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781138298590
• eBook ISBN: 9781351580458
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

In this book, Rodríguez uses theories of critical literacy and culturally responsive teaching to argue that our schools, and our culture, need sustaining and inclusive young adult (YA) literature/s to meet the needs of culturally and linguistically diverse readers and all students. This book provides an outline for the study of literature through cultural and literary criticism, via essays that analyze selected YA literature (drama, fiction, nonfiction, and poetry) in four areas: scribal identities and the self-affirmation of adolescents; gender and sexualities; schooling and education of young adult characters; and teachers' roles and influences in characters' coming of age. Applying critical literacy theories and a youth studies lens, this book shines a light on the need for culturally sustaining and inclusive pedagogies to read adolescent worlds. Complementing these essays are critical conversations with seven key contemporary YA literature writers, adding biographical perspectives to further expand the critical scholarship and merits of YA literature.

PART I

Literary Criticism and Literacy Education

1

INTRODUCTION

Inclusive Young Adult Literature

And sometimes when you grow up outside the reach of the American Dream, you’re in a better position to record the truth. That we don’t all operate under the same set of rules. That our stories aren’t all assigned the same value in the eyes of decision makers.

(de la Peña, 2016, p. 2)

For most of my childhood, I enjoyed reading. Books came to life in the libraries and classrooms I entered. The voices of teachers and librarians gave life and essential oxygen to books with high praise and through live performances, en vivo. Like in a reciprocal understanding and relationship, books maintained stories and languages alive across time for readers to discover and devour with other readers, teachers, librarians, and tellers of stories. Thus, my imagination soared, and my world enlarged through books, stories, and storytellers.

In my early adolescence, however, I began to hate reading in most forms. Reading became testable, or quantifiable, between and among my peers and other populations deemed at risk, special, or with limited comprehension or proficiency. We looked for information in every sentence that then could be manipulated into an answerable question like in an assembly line consisting of conspiratorial authors and controlled texts. Frankly, I began to detest reading in secondary school and later for most of my adolescence, especially when it was connected to a multiple-choice test or involved Scantron sheets. (A grading convenience for some teachers became my nightmare and terror as a student.) This all occurred in Texas, the birthplace of high-stakes standardized assessments for the masses.

When some of my secondary teachers assigned their favorite books, I wanted to vomit or throw the books with great force across many classrooms. Why? They were not my favorites. I had my own books to find, consider, and choose. As the years progressed in my schooling, it became more difficult to find characters who would keep me reading with conviction and interest. Latinx characters remained either invisible or unborn, even though my classmates and I were present and yearned to read about them and us including our cultures and homes. Yes, I could get cantankerous as an adolescent if it involved books and reading. To further complicate our reading and existence, our sexual attraction, identities, and preferences remained unspoken and thus silenced. In the same way, the absence of text choice reduced my reading motivation and made my reading engagement unattractive. Overall, looking back, my interests as well as my peers’ interests were disregarded by those making decisions and without conferring with readers like us.

The books I chose on my own I liked best. Some books were found in school and public libraries, while others I found in bookstores. Some of the books I bought with my after-school employment earnings were Black Boy, The Bluest Eye, Chants, The Color Purple, The House on Mango Street, Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez, and The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood among Ghosts, among others. My journey to read and—years later—to teach literature began with my civil disobedience and also through my deep interest in human stories, literacies, and compassion. The books I noted here were essential in building my own reservoir of strength as a reader and thinker and were the beginning of my autodidactic experience in the guise of a literacy protest.

Today, as a teacher educator of literacy and literature, I am committed to teaching my students to: (1) make meaning for understanding with inclusive YA literature, (2) challenge themselves and others to reach their potential, and (3) become caring, civic-minded citizens in a democracy. Literacy is interconnected with all transactions of and for life and can bring change, hope, and opportunity in the lives of young people as they come of age. In fact, students must put into practice all the elements of literacy and cultural knowledge as readers (literati): knowing, listening, memorizing, noticing, observing, performing, questioning, reading, speaking, thinking (metacognition), understanding, viewing, and writing (wonderment) in their lives (Rodríguez, 2017). This book is a scholarly attempt to bring more inclusion into our YA literary analysis and literacy conversation about youth of color, including Latinx adolescents, and their cultural knowledge and gender identities. Moreover, the direct voices of YA literature authors complement the study of their literary characters’ ways of being, knowing, and understanding as they join the canon in our homes, libraries, and schools.

Restorying the Stories

In the current age of distinguishing among facts, information, and emerging post-truths, critical conversations about access and inclusion become more relevant and even responsive for literacy and democracy in a republic. To come of age in one’s own self and as one experiences schooling and storytelling through literature and via national narratives, the making of myths, histories, and stories can offer multiple lenses about what is told and untold across time, societies, speakers, and writers. Some narratives function with a separate “set of rules,” as de la Peña (2016) noted, or established criteria, in support of a singular narrative, structure of telling, and access to print in the guise of literacy for ascension toward power.

However, with the enactment of counternarratives to advance critical conversations, engagement through stories about an individual, group, and nation expands the making of meaning toward the building of deeper inquiry and perspectives in the reading and study of young adult (YA) literature. To counteract the singular telling of a story permits and advances the “telling a multitude of stories that can humanize and empower,” as argued by Thomas and Stornaiuolo (2016). Such actions, they reminded us, are “vital to counteract incomplete textual renderings that dehumanize and divide” (p. 314).

In addition, Thomas and Stornaiuolo (2016) introduced the act of “restorying” toward textual justice, so that young adults may both scribe and inscribe themselves through their transactions with print and digital texts through a participatory readership approach. As an illustration, Thomas and Stornaiuolo analyzed Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s TED Talk titled “The Danger of a Single Story” (2009) and acknowledged that the ownership by those “who can tell stories, how many, when, and under what circumstances—and that some stories, if told often enough, can become the sine qua non of a person, a group, or a nation” (p. 313). The critical approach considered for both storying and restorying emphasizes the practice of questioning narratives and the intentions that include advancing critical literacy and empowering adolescent readers.

In the author conversation with Jeff Anderson (Chapter 6), he revealed,

We need to be vulnerable as writers and as teachers, so our students or readers can find their peace and do what there is to do. There isn’t one way for it to happen. There are many ways, and I think books change us—writing them and reading them.

(p. 112)

Anderson’s perspective is fitting for the restorying that restores agency and considers the challenges and vulnerabilities of coming of age.

Literary Value and Criteria

Inclusivity as it relates to YA literature is central to the concepts presented in this book. My argument for the representation of additional voices via literacies of inclusion has a long history in literary criticism and literacy education studies, ranging from curricula and instruction to the publishing industry in defining both American and literature. Inclusion includes the voices of dissent and counternarratives. To put it another way, those who hold the power of choice and influence for decision-making determine, in several ways, the storying and “restorying” that unfolds for publication, pedagogy, and readership. For instance, the movements in schools and academia for the recovery and inclusion of feminist narratives and multicultural texts in the literary canon gained greater attention in the 1970s and 1980s with various actions, debates, and demands influencing curricula, instruction, and publishing across the country (Bona & Maini, 2006).

Furthermore, members of organizations such as the Modern Language Association of America and National Council of Teachers of English formed caucuses, committees, and task forces for diversity and inclusion in membership, programming, publications, and textbooks (Lindemann, 2010; Nicholls, 2007). The efforts by these groups, among others, to expand the canon and dialogue advanced the need for more representation of inclusive texts and narratives about identities and literary contributions of all Americans in curricula, publications, and scholarship. Much of the results of organizing members and leaders and presenting statements and resolutions led to the inclusion of more perspectives and conversations to institute diversity and inclusion in literary criticism and literacy education studies (Perry & Stallworth, (2013).

In the literary movements for access, representation, and inclusion, Bona and Maini (2006) observed, “Critics and academics questioned the criteria used to determine literary value, criteria that usually included vague notions of aesthetic excellence and universality. They asked: ‘What is excellence?’ ‘Who determines it?’ ‘Whose reality/truth is universal?’” (p. 6). These three questions remain relevant for educators, writers, and researchers in the study of children’s and YA literature. Over the years, decision-making has gained greater scrutiny from the editorial level to scholarship practices in need of a democratic process of inclusion. The founding of the We Need Diverse Books Campaign (WNDB) is a recent example of grassroots organizing to advocate for change in the publishing industry to “produce and promote literature that reflects and honors the lives of all young people” (2016, p. 3). The WNDB vision speaks to restorying for a “world in which all children can see themselves in the pages of a book” (p. 2).

Inclusive Young Adult Literature and Curricula?

In the 21st century, YA literature continues to redefine our understanding of adolescence and the inclusion of more authors of diverse backgrounds and texts as representative of readership across the United States. A significant body of YA literature already joins the ranks of the classics, as more texts increase the appeal and readership interest of adolescents and adults alike. Today, YA literature is taught extensively in middle and secondary schools as well as higher education, particularly in literacy and English Education programs. However, the need for teaching texts that reflect inclusive approaches and characters is growing even in the face of censorship and opposition to inclusivity. Yet authors, teachers, and scholars are including in the conversation the diverse circumstances, experiences, and realities that shape the lives of people of color, gender diversity, people with disabilities, and members of cultural, ethnic, religious, and LGBTQ communities. In Figure 1.1, Thomas and Stornaiuolo (2016) noted the “forms of restorying” that unfold in narratives such as YA literature.

An inclusive approach toward the reading and study of YA literature redefines canonical literatures at the secondary school level and also positions teachers to guide students in their civic challenges, intellectual curiosities, and social responsibilities of adolescence and adulthood. In addition, the application of culturally responsive and sustaining pedagogies in literacy learning and literary studies advances forms of storying and foments the journey of becoming human in a democracy and global world. Geneva Gay (2000/2018) introduced culturally responsive teaching, which legitimizes students’ cultural knowledge, prior experiences, and performance styles. As a pedagogy, teachers reflect on their cultural referents to support students’ intellectual curiosity and experience for academic learning through the institutional (school), personal (teacher), and instructional (curriculum) dimensions. Accordingly, a theoretical stance proposed by Django Paris (2012), culturally sustaining pedagogy “seeks to perpetuate and foster—to sustain—linguistic, literate, and cultural pluralism as part of the democratic project of schooling” (p. 93). The pluralism Paris proposes aligns with the inclusive approaches to the study of YA literature.

FIGURE 1.1 Forms of Restorying by Ebony L. Thomas and Amy Stornaiuolo. Courtesy of Harvard Educational Review.

Paris’s perspective about schooling resonates with Peter McLaren’s (201...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Teaching Culturally Sustaining and Inclusive Young Adult Literature
• Language, Culture, and Teaching
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Dedication1
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Series Editor Foreword by Sonia Nieto
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Permissions
• Part I Literary Criticism and Literacy Education
• Part II Conversations With Authors of Young Adult Literature
• Part III ¡Adelante!