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Community books/Madlenka
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From: ALaFayeBooks at aol.com <ALaFayeBooks>
Date: Fri, 3 Oct 2003 17:43:05 EDT
Thank you, Sue Hemberger for pointing out that Madlenka uses misleading cultural categories that send mixed messages about geographical and ethnic categories. I looked closer at the book and I can see that Ms. Hemberger makes an excellent point. While the book supports cultural diversity and community involvement through individual contribution and the sharing of important life events, it does make some misleading and oddly nonparallel cultural statements. For
instance, Madlenka knows that Mr. Gaston is a French baker, but she only knows that Mr. Eduardo, the greengrocer is from Latin America. For each culture or cultural category, she makes a list of things associated with that culture, some of which are accurate only in the most general sense and others which are inaccurate, such as making references to Chinese, Japanese, and Tibetan culture as Asian without identifying that the references (samurai swords, the Dali Lama, the great wall of China) are specific to a certain country or suggesting that U.S. style pizza is Italian. My apologies for not taking a more critical look at the text before suggesting it.
Alexandria LaFaye
Received on Fri 03 Oct 2003 04:43:05 PM CDT
Date: Fri, 3 Oct 2003 17:43:05 EDT
Thank you, Sue Hemberger for pointing out that Madlenka uses misleading cultural categories that send mixed messages about geographical and ethnic categories. I looked closer at the book and I can see that Ms. Hemberger makes an excellent point. While the book supports cultural diversity and community involvement through individual contribution and the sharing of important life events, it does make some misleading and oddly nonparallel cultural statements. For
instance, Madlenka knows that Mr. Gaston is a French baker, but she only knows that Mr. Eduardo, the greengrocer is from Latin America. For each culture or cultural category, she makes a list of things associated with that culture, some of which are accurate only in the most general sense and others which are inaccurate, such as making references to Chinese, Japanese, and Tibetan culture as Asian without identifying that the references (samurai swords, the Dali Lama, the great wall of China) are specific to a certain country or suggesting that U.S. style pizza is Italian. My apologies for not taking a more critical look at the text before suggesting it.
Alexandria LaFaye
Received on Fri 03 Oct 2003 04:43:05 PM CDT
