Learning about cultural communities through children’s literature

 

Objectives

 

  • Students will gain new understandings of the Vietnamese American experience through children’s literature.
  • Students will learn to critically review children’s literature and expand that knowledge to critically review other types of literature and textbooks.

 

What You Will Need

  • Check you school library or local library system for the following books: The Lotus Seed, The Journey Home, To Swim in Our Own Pond
  • American Ethnic Literature Review Worksheet (Student and Teacher Versions)
  • Literature in the classroom or library
  • “Writing a Short Story” student hand-out for Assessment Option 2 ShortStory.image

 

Activity

Reading children’s literature can greatly enhance understanding and empathy for a specific event or character for all levels and ages of students. In addition, skills used to critically examine children’s literature can be expanded to review other types of literature and social science texts found in the school or community.

 

1) Use the handout, “American Ethnic Literature Review Worksheet” to analyze one of the children’s books included in this curriculum, or check out a children’s book about the Vietnamese American community from the library to analyze. Students can do this activity individually or in small groups. The Teacher Version in the Hand-outs Section has additional questions to help guide students’ reflections and responses if needed.

 

2) Discuss students’ findings in a class discussion. In addition to sharing answers to questions on the worksheet, students can also discuss the following questions for each book:

 

  • What was your initial impression? Did you like or dislike the book? Why?
  • What did you learn about Vietnamese Americans from each book?
  • Was the author objective or subjective towards any particular group or topic? Can you give some examples?
  • Were there any different interpretations of the story between different students?
  • Are there any students who have had a similar experience as the main characters in the books?
  • What question, if any, do you have if you could talk with the author?

 

 

Teacher’s Note:

The Council on Interracial Books for Children issued criteria for analyzing books on Asian Americans in 1976 which are still valid today. They are excerpted below: (from Council for Interracial Books for Children Inc. 1976)

 

A children’s book about Asian Americans should:

  • reflect the realities and way-of-life of an Asian American people;
  • transcend stereotypes;
  • seek to rectify historical distortions and omissions;
  • avoid the “model minority” and “super” minority symdromes;
  • reflect an awareness of the changing status of women in society;
  • contain art and photos which accurately reflect the racial diversity of Asian Americans.

 

The books included in this curriculum module were chosen as examples of excellent literature so that students and teachers could have a chance to enjoy them in case they were not available in the school or local library. However, they may not be the best options for critiquing since they follow most of the guidelines listed above and students therefore may need to critique other ethnic American literature that they find outside of this curriculum module.

 

 

Assessment:

 

Option 1: Analyzing classroom literature

Students can develop questions based on the “American Ethnic Literature Review Worksheet” to analyze social science/social studies textbooks in the classroom or school library. Additional questions for critiquing these texts might be:

  • Which groups are being covered in this text?
  • Are there any groups you can think of that are not included?
  • Why would certain groups be included or not included for study in this text?
  • What would be the effects on the larger, mainstream communities if certain groups are omitted?
  • What do you think it would feel like if you didn’t see your culture or group that you identified with in this text?

 

 

Option 2: Writing a children’s story that includes a holiday, festival or family tradition

Often children’s stories are simplified to cover one or two main themes, and use a minimum number of words to convey an entire story. Therefore, students wishing to write a children’s story, using their own experiences or the information they obtain through their oral history assignment (Extension Activity from Lesson 4) will need to figure out how to reduce the content down to its main points and issues to keep the content simple enough for young children to understand.

 

 

Activity:

Ask students to write a children’s story using a special holiday, festival or family tradition that is unique to their own culture (or family) as part of the story. Have students refer to the children’s literature included in this curriculum as a model. Also, use the tips below (also listed on the “Writing a Short Story” hand-out) as a checklist for including the essential elements of a short story.

 

“Writing a Short Story”

  1. Essential elements: Characters, setting and conflict/action:
  • Characters: Who are they? (How old, what do they look like, how do they act, why do they act that way, what do they feel during the story? Also, how is each character a part of the holiday, festival or cultural tradition that you are highlighting in your story?)
  • Story setting: Where and when? Describe the place and time and how this relates to the holiday, festival or cultural tradition that you are including in your story.
  • Conflict or action: What is the conflict? How does it come about? How is it resolved and how does this process affect the characters?
  1. Once you have thought of these elements, then do the following:
  • Add dialogue between the characters, making sure to define any special words that those outside your cultural community or family would not know;
  • Provide descriptive words to give the reader more details about the story (i.e., words that describe colors, smells, sounds, emotions, etc);
  • Also include descriptive words for the reader to better understand what the characters are feeling during the story;
  • Lastly, check to see if your sentences are easy to understand, and not all the same length.

 

  1. Next, reread your story for clarity and try to see if the story has enough information and details so that a reader who is from outside your cultural community will be able to understand and relate to the story. Also, make sure that the conflict and resolution (or cause and effect elements) are clear for the reader to identify.

 

  1. Optional: Add illustrations!!!

 

[Parts of this lesson were adapted from Dresser, N. (1994). I felt like I was from another planet: Writing from personal experience. Menlo Park, CA: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company.]

 

Extension Activity

Critiquing books: Have students find other books on the experiences of Americans of non-European descent to critique using their experience from this lesson. Make sure that the stories are about ethnic Americans or immigrants or refugees coming to America (folk tales and stories about people in other countries can tell about world customs and cultures that are the origins of many American ethnic communities, but they do not necessarily tell about ethnic American experiences and issues).

Books included in this curriculum include:

 

Journey Home by Lawrence McKay, Jr. (1998) New York, NY: Lee & Low Publishing.

(Picture book for ages 6 and up).

Mai tells the story of her mother’s return to her homeland of Vietnam to search for her birth family. Having been uprooted by the Vietnam War and adopted by a white American family in the U.S., her mother’s only link to her birth family is a kite she has saved. The fact that Mai is of mixed race is incidental to the story, but worth noting since there are so few books that feature biracial children.

 

The Lotus Seed by Sherry Garland. (1993). NY: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

(Picture book)

A beautifully illustrated story of one refugee’s family told through the eyes of a young Vietnamese refugee now living in the United States.  Themes covered include immigration (flight as a result of war), adjustment to the U.S., and cultural symbols of importance.

 

To Swim in Our Own Pond: A Book of Vietnamese Proverbs by Ngoc-Dung Tran. (1998). Fremont, CA: Shen’s Books.

(Bilingual Vietnamese/English picture book).

This book of Vietnamese proverbs is beautifully illustrated and shows how some values are universal and shared by both Vietnamese and Americans. The author came to the United States in 1991 and has been an instructor of English for over 20 years.

 

The Land I Lost by Nhuong, Huynh Quang (1982). New York, NY: Harper & Row Publishers.

(upper primary/middle school)

This winner of several awards, including the William Allen White Children’s Book Award, this book transports the reader to the author’s home village in central Vietnam where he encountered crocodiles and poisonous snakes, and had a pet water buffalo, shortly before the war changed his way of life. The author was drafted into the South Vietnamese Army and paralyzed by a gunshot wound. He came to the U.S. in 1969 and now resides in the U.S.

 

Where the Ashes Are: The Odyssey of a Vietnamese Family by Nguyen Qui Duc. (1994). New York, NY: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 264 pages.

(middle and high school)

First published in 1994 and reprinted in paperback in 2009, this book recounts Duc’s family’s experiences after North Vietnam seized control of South Vietnam. Duc was able to flee to the United States to be with his older brother, but his father was sent to re-education camps where he was detained for 12 years. The stories of Duc, a refugee teen in the U.S. who goes back to Southeast Asia to help in the refugee camps, his father’s confinement, and his mother and sister’s life under communist reform are intertwined to provide an intimate history of one family’s life during the decades after the Fall of Saigon. Themes brought out by his book include ethnic identity, adjustment to a new culture, generation gap between the more Americanized youth and their parents, and the emotional duress of being in exile.

 

See Teacher Resource Section for additional resources