[LM_NET] SHARE: Great listing of YA titles dealing with "Teens Between Cultures"

["Ronda Y. Foust" <rfoust150@COMCAST.NET>]

While I just posted about the main site at PaperTigers, I felt this  
might be of interest to those looking for YA titles dealing with  
multicultural issues.  This article/reading list, located at:  http:// 
www.papertigers.org/personalViews/archiveViews/MPerkins2.html  I'm  
excerpting the first portion of it below.  Following the excerpted  
portion below (on the website) is a bibliography of titles that deal  
with these issues.

> Teenagers growing up between cultures – as I like to describe  
> internationally adopted, biracial, or immigrant kids – face some  
> soul-sickening stereotypes in movies, books, and television:
>
> 1. The Noble Savage:
> A person like me is wiser than everybody else.
>
> 2. The Exotic Stranger:
> A person like me is more desirable because s/he is foreign.
>
> 3. The Token Sidekick:
> A person like me is never the hero unless the story is about race.
>
> 4. The Under “Class” Man:
> A person like me is always poor and uneducated.
>
> 5. The Accented Alien:
> A person who sounds like me is either dangerous or funny.
>
> 6. The “Not-It” Reject:
> A person who looks like me is never alluring or attractive.
>
> Thankfully, many good stories – i.e. the antidote to all of the  
> above mentioned notions – are being published these days, featuring  
> people originating in every corner of the planet. And these are the  
> books I feature on my Fire Escape – books for teens (and a few  
> adult books that appeal to young adults) that shatter one or more  
> of the six stereotypes listed here.
>
> One caveat: As I am sure it's also true of younger readers, I don’t  
> want to read only multicultural books. My soul is hungry for any  
> hero’s journey, any sense of place, any insight into the human  
> existence or relationships.
>
> As Hazel Rochman said in her now-classic Horn Book essay, “Against  
> Borders:”
>
>  A good story lets you know people as individuals in all their  
> particularity and conflict; and once you see someone as a person —  
> their meanness and their courage — then you’ve reached beyond  
> stereotype ... Reading makes immigrants of us all. It takes us away  
> from home, but, most importantly, it finds homes for us everywhere.


Ronda Y. Foust
School Media Specialist
Karns High School
Knoxville, TN
readingdragon@comcast.net
http://thebookdragon.blogspot.com/



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