The dangers of culturally relevant literature....

I was recently search for videos on youtube. I came across a video on the topic. I watched the video, very aimed at elementary educators. Below the video are comments from the public. One critic repeated the same word over and over, trying to criticize the use of culturallly relevant lit and pedagogy.  There were comments like, why are there no courses in white literature? etc.

Some observations... first, when I took many courses in American lit at univ. it was almost all white writers. Yes, there was some diversity by age, location, gender, but not much.

Now flash forward to using almost all Latino literature in college settings.... Actually, some latino students do not want to read latino authors; they feel uncomfortable. Now whether it is a good uncomfortable as in, I am like this and I am thinking like this but I don't want to admit it. you called me out but I can ignore it and pretend it is not an issue.... some seem to be wondering, and these are those who have lived in the US a long time and are Americanized.

There have also been resistance from parents and school boards about novels by latino authors, such as The Rain God. I received a complaint by a white fundamentalist parent that the book was sexually harassing her son, who was in my high school class.

First, I am not sure that a novel can sexually harass anybody. Second, the lawyers did not know how reading a book was sexual harassment and how a boy would be sexually harassed by a gay character in the novel.

The parent apparently thought I was gay so would use a novel with a gay character on purpose. To me the book was not even about gays, but the saga of a Mexican family living on the border. The gay character was just another example of secrets the family of Mama Chona had to deal with.

I will expound upon all this matter in a later post. My point now is that when so many students now are basically now readers, even at community college, we need some type of intervention and if it is culturally relevant lit and pedagogy, then so be it. We need to try to do something. This is an attempt to build a bridge and to have students read. We just need them to read and starting with their culture is just that, a start. They should go on to realize that all great literature is the same. We can relate to any characters in any culture because they are human. And perhaps American studies is world studies.