Insider/Outsider Debate

These four articles that we read for this week were very interesting to say the least. Each author had a somewhat different perspective on multicultural literature which really opened up my eyes and realized how much multicultural literature can encompass. They all made very distinct, clear and informative points about multicultural literature and also the insider/outsider debate.

What I got out of reading these articles is that Harris and Sims Bishop focus on race when talking about what multicultural literature encompasses whereas Shannon says that focusing just on race is too limiting. Although, both Shannon and Harris make a statement explaining that culture and multiculturalism includes many things. "Culture is a design for living - ways of acting, believing, and valuing; it's a shared set of ideas, behaviors, discourses, and attitudes which internally and externally define a social group. Culture, then, is not limited to race because it includes, region, gender, language, ethnicity, economic class, and other social markers which can demarcate a social group from others" (Shannon, 68 CP). Harris goes on to talk more about what exactly multiculturalism encompasses. "I choose to focus on the multi-ethnic component, but I acknowledge and analyze nearly every group identified as multicultural. I state explicitly that multiculturalism incorporates several aspects of difference, (race/ethnicity, gender, class, sexual orientation, religion, language, geographic location, ect.)" (Harris, 78 CP).

I think that an insider author would give a different, in some cases, better approach to a story because they simply have lived the life of that character. On the other hand, Harris makes a good point. "They may not belong to the same ethnic group as the characters in the story, but may be in the same social economic status or have other connections with the characters. These connections enable them to engage in the story and empathize with the characters" (Harris, 92). I think it would be great for children to be able to pick up a book and be able to recognize a part of them in one of the characters. I believe that an insider author would be able to make these connections a little easier than outsider authors for the main fact that they have experience in the culture. Sims Bishop made a good point when she said "The reference to 'varying degrees of success' does forecast my conclusion that white writers frequently bring to their fiction about African-American culture as do writers who know it from the inside because it is the way they have been acculturated" (Sims Bishop, 73CP).

Overall, these articles just made me realize that maybe an insider author would have an upper hand when talking about multicultural literature.