Insider vs. Outsider

To be completely honest I am still partially confused about what constitutes and insider and an outsider. For the most part I would say I consider myself to be an insider because I am from the majority in the sense that I am a white, middle class, heterosexual, educated woman. However, does considering myself an insider mean that I feel comfortable in my environment at all times? No. As I think about the issue, I define an insider as a person who can, for the most part, feel comfortable in the environment they live in through normal every day activities as well as in more structured situations such as the classroom. In terms of literature I would say that being an insider means to be able to relate to the characters presented in a text without stretching to do so. By this I mean being able to easily relate to large characteristics such as race, gender, religion and economic class. In the terms that I have defined I feel as if multicultural literature is an avenue to give every individual a chance to take on the insider persona. It gives children and adults for that matter a connectedness and understanding in regards to their everyday lives. I also believe that no matter what actions are taken, there is always going to be someone that feels like an outsider when reading literature. By this meaning that they cannot fully relate to major cultural or lifestyle aspects of the story. However, I believe that at times being an outsider can be very beneficial. I do not think it is right that the same groups of people are constantly presented with literature in which they can feel like and insider while reading it. Everyone deserves that chance and they deserve it equally. I believe that multicultural literature is extremely important but I do not think that it should become the only source of literature that individuals are exposed to. If this were to happen it would over correct the problem by placing another group of people in the position of being a constant outsider. This is a hard issue because it comes down to where do you draw the line? How do you make the exposure of multicultural literature equal to the mainstream literature? Keeping all of this in mind, I also begin to question what constitutes multicultural literature. I don't think that multicultural literature should be limited to race. There are issues with gender, economic status, sexual orientation, and religion that all deserve their place in multicultural literature. Culture is not solely based on race and for that reason race should not be the only determiner in multicultural literature. I think that it can be difficult to incorporate every culture but it deserves a try because we cannot say that a culture does not have representation in multicultural literature because there are few people who follow that culture. That is again targeting a single group constantly as outsiders within literature.

The Heart of a Chief and further readings

The Heart of a Chief was a great book, let me start out by saying that. However, in preparation to reading the text, I read a couple articles about stereotypes and generalizations. I have always had a difficult time determining where to draw the line between a generalization and a stereotype. From the readings I gathered that generalizations are okay, however stereotypes need to be avoided. Personally I find it difficult even consider generalizations even acceptable. Throughout my education, I have been told that every individual is different and you cannot make assumptions, or in other words generalizations about a person based on what their cultural make up may be. But is this making generalizations or does it cross the line to stereotyping? I feel as if I still need the distinction to be explained because it is such a difficult and complex issue to grapple with. As I began reading The Heart of a Chief, I immediately began to look for stereotypes in the text. What I found interesting and a bit frustrating was that although the narrator expressed the fact that he was angered by stereotypes used against him, he was in a way making reference to stereotypes of different people and even his own. It struck me when Chris, the narrator, was speaking about his father Mito and made the connection of alcoholism. Right away I saw this as a stereotype because I have often heard that Indians and drunks and alcoholics. However, as I kept reading I realized that for some individuals, alcoholism is a reality as it is for Mito. Chris was explaining that his father, not the Indian population had a drinking problem. What I began to ask myself was, is this support of the stereotype? I answered myself no because although Mito could be placed into the stereotype the fact that he was an alcoholic was not because he was an Indian, but because like many other people of all races, he used alcohol to suppress his problems of losing his wife and not living up to the expectation as a chief and as a father.

Another aspect of stereotyping that I found interesting was when Chris made the stereotypical statement of calling Katie a Cherokee Princess after she had admitted to him that she was part Indian. His friends were laughing about the statement and even Chris was, although he felt guilty for doing it. There is a passage in the book that address the issue of people outside the Indian community not knowing what hurts those within the Indian community. Chris pointed out that it was the fact that people do not know when they are hurting someones feelings and the fact that they don't know is the worst part. I feel however that being naive is completely different from was is right and wrong and disregarding it as Chris did in calling Katie a Cherokee Princess. I did like this part in the text because I feel that it shows readers that no one is exempt from making stereotypes. It shows that everyone, even if they at one point were victims themselves, can be guilty of using stereotypes. I think this is a good message to send to students because stereotyping can happen in many forms by many people. By highlighting the fact that everyone can be guilty of this may be a step in the right direction of understanding what stereotypes are and how to halt the use of them.

About me and my blog

For the last three years I have been working toward an Elementary Education degree from Michigan State University. My focus has always been Language Arts, however just recently I made the decision to pursue an endorsement in TESOL (Teaching English as a Second Language). Throughout my educational career I have gained much information regarding diversity in education. Coming from a non-diverse school it has been important to me to understand diversity and how to incorporate it into my own classroom. This is one of the major reasons I have enrolled in TE 448, Issues of Diversity in Children's and Adolescent Literature. I feel that at this point I understand the need for diverse literature in the classroom. Each classroom will be comprised of students from a variety of backgrounds, may it be race, religion, or class. I feel that throughout high school the majority of diverse literature I was exposed to, if any at all, dealt with racial differences alone. I feel that I need to be exposed to the methods in which to choose rich and meaningful diverse literature, because not all diverse literature is good. If I am going to make the attempt to incorporate diverse literature into my classroom I need to understand what categorizes good diverse literature. Throughout the semester I will be exploring several examples of diverse literature and questioning it as I go. One thing that I feel I really want to gain from this course in diverse literature is to determine how many different types of diverse literature exist and where I can find them.