Diversity in Tween Fiction

"It is said that fiction increases/improves empathy. How can reading books from diverse cultures and lifestyles help increase our cultural competence, as well as tweens? Feel free to use examples from other reading such as Higher Power of Lucky (rural) or Are you there God? (religion)"

 

Books about diverse cultures and lifestyles increase our cultural competence, as well as tweens, because we learn through them. Through the story and the characters we learn of real hardships, realities and everything that makes us different, culturally, but we also learn about all that is similar; family dynamics, the need for the basics of survival, dreams, hopes, aspirations, disappointments, romances, ethical confrontations, seeking our places in the world at large. It’s a question of knowledge. We re-evaluate our own values and beliefs when we find a character that seems like they would have nothing in common with us, only to find that we are more similar than one might think. I am no longer a tween girl, in a new town, worried about developing, fitting in, and defining her relationship with a higher power and her contemporaries, but I can certainly empathize with Margaret and her battles to fit in and find her own inner voice in Are You There God, It’s Me, Margaret. By reading of her battles I am reminded of what I went through at that age, how I felt, how it compares to Margaret, how beneficial a book like this would have been to me at that time, and reminds me that there are children out there now that are going through the exact same thing.

Without the proper looking glass, without the proper knowledge, there is ignorance, and ignorance breeds fear and hate, mistrust and policies not necessarily beneficial or humane to anyone. By reading the story of a young African-American orphan who runs away from the foster system to find his father during the Great Depression, as in Bud, Not Buddy, you don’t have to be an orphan or an African-American to understand intrinsically Bud’s need to belong, how dangerous his journey truly was, the pain of losing his mother or being abused, the dynamic experienced with racial tensions or the desperate conditions of those who had lost everything and just wanted to provide for their families, no matter the cost. You can feel yourself in the shoes of those waiting in the meal lines of the local mission, or the bitterness of those down and out who are too proud to accept help. You can feel the relief of those who are willing to help and become family, even if only temporary. You understand, this character is not  unwholy like me.

The same can be said for Esperanza Rising. From a Hispanic migrant perspective, we can empathize, and in some cases, sympathize with a young character, Esperanza, and her contemporaries, that are forced to grow up far too soon, due to circumstances beyond her control. Her entire world is turned upside down in a very short period and she has to figure out how to “Not be afraid to start over again,” even at the tender age of 12 and 13. Starting out with a typical tween viewpoint of what is important, i.e. status, appearance, parties, friends, rites of passage, becoming an adult, we watch her learn hard lessons that rearrange her thinking and really transform her into that young adult. She learns responsibility, equality, fairness, gains an extremely determined work ethic and conquers her own prejudices while she truly learns to understand the importance of family, beyond circumstance and fortune.  She learns what the peasant woman on the train from Mexico really meant by “I am poor, but I am rich.” The readers will also learn what is truly important in life versus the standards they have come to live by through habit and social influence. One does not need to be all the things the character is in order to be influenced by them. In fact, the greatest influence, and positive change, can occur when the reader and the character are very different, but are similar where it really counts…..in mind and conscience.

I'm so glad I got to read these books now. I wish they had been presented to me when I was younger. I don't believe I was exposed to multi-cultural authors until the 12th grade during an A.P. English class where we learned about the Harlem Renaissance and the books of Zora Neale Hurston and her contemporaries. The language was difficult at first, because it was written to replicate the phonetics and speech (often influenced by geography) of the characters during the time but they were more adult oriented books. The glory was in the content. Learning about what it was really like during the Renaissance, the depression, before the civil rights movement and the struggles that African-Americans and minorities dealt with on a daily basis.... comparing how far we'd come since then and how much farther we really needed to go.

However, the books mentioned above, Bud, Not Buddy & Esperanza Rising, while also being authentic in tone, speak in a manner that is easy for tweens and adults to understand with no syallabic interpretation needed, as in the more difficult novels. They are written that way on purpose. They reach a wider audience and are easily translated to teach the meaning and to explore the characters and situations, to be easy to relate to. We don't need whitewashed covers to get us to read these books (Mondor,C.). We don't need to be tricked into believing in their value and the application of their lessons and content into our own lives. All we need is a good synopsis on the back that shows the heart of the story and cover relavent to the content and we will see, that through those differences, we can also see ourselves.

Ryan, P. M. (2007). Esperanza rising. New York: Scholastic Inc.
Curtis, C. P. (2005). Bud, not buddy. New York: Laurel Leaf.
Blume, J. (1988). Are you there god? it's me, margaret.. New York, NY: Random House, Inc.
Mondor, C. Kids of color and the new American whitewashing. Bookslut. Retrieved from http://www.bookslut.com/features/2010_02_015679.php