Multicultural Literature and Literacies: Making Space for Difference

Abstract

xi + 300 pages. $18.95 paper.Multicultural education is, to use a term fashionable in contemporary political discourse, one of the "hot button" issues of the day. At Texas A&M University, where I teach, and at many other institutions around the country, attempts to introduce multicultural requirements into the curriculum have generated a good deal of heat and only occasionally much light and wisdom. Multicultural Literature and Literacies is a book to be recommended to those who wonder what all the fuss is about.The book is laid out in a particularly careful and instructive manner, with three different sections made up of 3 or 4 essays each, followed by an analysis that identifies and responds to the previous essays in that section. Thus, the first part ("Defining Difference: Perspectives on Writing Literature") includes essays by two creative writers, Ron Welburn and Reggie Young, and a teacher-critic, Valerie Babb, followed by an essay by Barbara McCaskill that speaks to the first three essays while charting its own course and identifying further issues. Welburn and Young provide suggestive and challenging perspectives based on their own experiences as writers who must be responsive to diverse audiences, while Babb explores the relationship between literacy, social power, and political empowerment. Mc-Caskill ties the three authors together by noting that each associates literacy with a three-fold purpose of "liberation, self-definition, and preservation of community spirit and history" (77). McCaskill's own essay is especially effective when she interprets the "iconography of the clothed and literate African," a "visual discourse" that functions "in tandem with the written word" (83). Her readings of portraits of Henry Box Brown and Ellen Craft are persuasive and illuminating.Part II, "Making Space: Perspectives on Writing Policy," begins with a theoretically-oriented discussion of literary canons and curricula by Alan C. Purves and moves from that discussion to descriptions of three experiences in schools in Texas, Pennsylvania, and California. Purves surveys issues germane to the discussion of canons and curricula, reviews how canons are formed, and identifies alter-