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More on Humor and More on Multicultural Literature
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From: Megan Schliesman <schliesman_at_education.wisc.edu>
Date: Thu, 21 Feb 2013 09:18:05 -0600
As some of us continue to post on the much larger issues regarding multicultural literature, I don't want us to lose sight of our discussion on humor in multicutlural literature.
In the Horn Book article cited in earlier posts, Uma Krishnaswami writes,
" But the truth is that you can’t see people as fully human if all you can feel for them is pity. Funny books with cultural contexts are capable of subverting and questioning issues of identity and belonging. By upsetting worthy apple carts, they offer new and necessary views of characters with cultural connections beyond the mainstream."
I love this view of humor as a way of opening doors and creating connections. "Serious" multicultural books provide readers who are outsiders to a culture with important and necessary means of understanding experience. History and often painful contemporary realities are personalized and empathy can blossom. (And let's not assume that young readers within a culture know all dimensions of cultural history and experience--of course they don't.) But the reality is that life is never all serious, and even within serious issues in real life, we can find humor. (In fact, it can be a great coping mechanism.)
The Horn Book article talks about Christopher Paul Curtis--a master of integrating humor into "serious " history in books such as "The Watsons Go To Birmingham--1963" and "Elijah of Buxton." And then there is the pure silliness of "Mr. Chickee's Funny Money." But as Uma Krishnaswami and Cynthia and Greg Leitich note, there's nothing funny or silly about the importance of books like these. If we want children's and young adult literature to truly be inclusive and reflective of cultural experience, how can we possibly leave humor out without further adding to the serious issue of underrepresentation?
I remember years ago at the CCBC, a Korean American woman in another department here at the university was responding to a picture book illustrated by Yumi Heo (I can't recall which one). We already loved Yumi Heo's illustration style, but what our colleague was able to tell us was how much Korean humor was reflected in Yumi Heo's llustrations. We appreciated the humor in her art, but did not realize the cultural context of some of that humor. What a wonderful discovery! We didn't need to "get it" to appreciate her art, but learning this certainly further enriched our appreciation; perhaps more important, there would be readers of that picture book who WOULD get it and appreciate it fully, seeing this dimension of their culture expressed.
Megan
-- Megan Schliesman, Librarian Cooperative Children's Book Center School of Education, University of Wisconsin-Madison 600 N. Park Street, Room 4290 Madison, WI 53706
608/262-9503 schliesman_at_education.wisc.edu
www.education.wisc.edu/ccbc/
Received on Thu 21 Feb 2013 09:18:05 AM CST
Date: Thu, 21 Feb 2013 09:18:05 -0600
As some of us continue to post on the much larger issues regarding multicultural literature, I don't want us to lose sight of our discussion on humor in multicutlural literature.
In the Horn Book article cited in earlier posts, Uma Krishnaswami writes,
" But the truth is that you can’t see people as fully human if all you can feel for them is pity. Funny books with cultural contexts are capable of subverting and questioning issues of identity and belonging. By upsetting worthy apple carts, they offer new and necessary views of characters with cultural connections beyond the mainstream."
I love this view of humor as a way of opening doors and creating connections. "Serious" multicultural books provide readers who are outsiders to a culture with important and necessary means of understanding experience. History and often painful contemporary realities are personalized and empathy can blossom. (And let's not assume that young readers within a culture know all dimensions of cultural history and experience--of course they don't.) But the reality is that life is never all serious, and even within serious issues in real life, we can find humor. (In fact, it can be a great coping mechanism.)
The Horn Book article talks about Christopher Paul Curtis--a master of integrating humor into "serious " history in books such as "The Watsons Go To Birmingham--1963" and "Elijah of Buxton." And then there is the pure silliness of "Mr. Chickee's Funny Money." But as Uma Krishnaswami and Cynthia and Greg Leitich note, there's nothing funny or silly about the importance of books like these. If we want children's and young adult literature to truly be inclusive and reflective of cultural experience, how can we possibly leave humor out without further adding to the serious issue of underrepresentation?
I remember years ago at the CCBC, a Korean American woman in another department here at the university was responding to a picture book illustrated by Yumi Heo (I can't recall which one). We already loved Yumi Heo's illustration style, but what our colleague was able to tell us was how much Korean humor was reflected in Yumi Heo's llustrations. We appreciated the humor in her art, but did not realize the cultural context of some of that humor. What a wonderful discovery! We didn't need to "get it" to appreciate her art, but learning this certainly further enriched our appreciation; perhaps more important, there would be readers of that picture book who WOULD get it and appreciate it fully, seeing this dimension of their culture expressed.
Megan
-- Megan Schliesman, Librarian Cooperative Children's Book Center School of Education, University of Wisconsin-Madison 600 N. Park Street, Room 4290 Madison, WI 53706
608/262-9503 schliesman_at_education.wisc.edu
www.education.wisc.edu/ccbc/
Received on Thu 21 Feb 2013 09:18:05 AM CST
