Troubling the Single Story: Teaching International Narrative through a Critical Literacy Lens

Taking Out the Trash

“…From these American origins, the white, rural poor became conflated with the "white trash" stereotype and its corresponding characteristics of lazy, loud, and lascivious individuals who live in unfavorable homes. These tropes have lingered into 21st-century media representations, from Cletus, the slack-jawed local in The Simpsons (Groening & Brooks, 1989 to individuals in the reality show Here Comes Honey Boo Boo (Lexton, Rogan, & Reddy, 2012-2014. While race, gender, religion, and sexuality continue to be integrated into discussions of critical literacy and engagement in social and educational discourse, class is still often an easy target for derision.…”

“…Students need to see themselves and others in a multitude of texts that portray the complexities of social issues and families that constitute rural workingclass life. We need texts that help to complicate single stories so that they do not exist as the single narrative that students have about any one group of people (Ehst & Hermann-Wilmarth, 2014). It is important to remind audiences that white, working-class people can exist in texts as more than comedic relief and that they are not defined by archetypal stereotypes of illiteracy and laziness.…”

“Let Us Pick Up Our Books”: Young Adult Literature and the Refugee Experience

“…In leading class discussions on these texts, teachers might want to refer to Ehst and Hermann-Wilmarth's (2014) article, "Troubling the single story: Teaching international narrative through a critical literacy lens," as it offers suggestions for how to use critical theory in the classroom in an effort to avoid "the pitfalls of tokenism" (p. 24). The authors explain:…”