Who We Are: Multicultural Multigenre Research Project
Book Choices
You will choose ONE of the below to read for your multigenre paper that we will be working on throughout the semester. Please look into the ones that appeal to you!
The Asian American Voice
Bone by Fae Myenne Ng
This remarkable first novel chronicles a believable journey through pain to healing, exposing the emotional scars–the bleeding hearts and aching kinship bones–of its characters as they try to survive. The Leong family, based in San Francisco’s Chinatown, includes three daughters: educator/community-relations specialist Leila, the narrator; restaurant hostess Ona, whose troubled life ends tragically in early adulthood; and Nina, who eventually takes off for New York, where she works as a flight attendant. Heading the clan (in an idiosyncratic, maddening fashion) are mother Mah, a seamstress who owns a baby clothing store, and father Leon, a merchant seaman who lives apart from his wife in an SRO-type hotel, keeping his “Going-Back-to-China Money” in a brown bag.
Under the Blood-Red Sun by Graham Salisbury: 1941 is a time of increasing confusion for Tomi Nakaji, 13, who lives on the island of Oahu. As if his gruff, stroke-slowed grandfather, who insists on waving his Japanese flag around the yard, isn’t enough, he has to contend with Keet Wilson, the bully next door. From a treetop, Tomi and his haole (white) best friend, Billy, witness in disbelief the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Tomi finds the horrors personalized as his father, a poor fisherman, and later his grandfather are arrested and his father’s fishing partner is killed. Racial/ethnic tension is subtly portrayed throughout the novel, but escalates following the Japanese attack. Character development of major figures is good, the setting is warmly realized, and the pace of the story moves gently though inexorably forward.
The Latino American Voice
Esperanza Rising by Pam Munoz Ryan:
Esperanza Ortega possesses all the treasures a young girl could want: fancy dresses; a beautiful home filled with servants in the bountiful region of Aguascalientes, Mexico; and the promise of one day rising to Mama’s position and presiding over all of Rancho de las Rosas. But a sudden tragedy shatters that dream, forcing Esperanza and Mama to flee to California and settle in a Mexican farm labor camp. There they confront the challenges of hard work, acceptance by their own people, and economic difficulties brought on by the Great Depression. When Mama falls ill from Valley Fever and a strike for better working conditions threatens to uproot their new life, Esperanza must relinquish her hold on the past and learn to embrace a future ripe with the riches of family and community. Pam Muñoz Ryan eloquently portrays the Mexican workers’ plight in this abundant and passionate novel that gives voice to those who have historically been denied one.
Under the Feet of Jesus by Helena Maria Viramontes
This first novel adds another important chapter to the existing body of literature about the Mexican-American experience. Slow and wandering at the outset, the novel picks up after a small plane releases a white shower of deadly pesticide, which washes over the face of Alejo, a teenager who is perched in a peach tree, busy stealing the soft, ripe fruit. Alejo is drenched with poison, much to the horror of Estrella, who has fallen in love with him. Alejo becomes sick but Estrella makes it her mission to help save him, and she is driven to great sacrifice in order to do so. Into this unforgiving world, Viramontes pours archetypal themes of the passage of time, young love, the bonds and tensions between generations and, above all, the straining of the spirit to transcend miserable material conditions.
The African American Voice
A Lesson Before Dying, by Ernest J. Gaines
In a small Cajun community in 1940s Louisiana, a young black man is about to go to the electric chair for murder. A white shopkeeper had died during a robbery gone bad; though the young man on trial had not been armed and had not pulled the trigger, in that time and place, there could be no doubt of the verdict or the penalty. “I was not there, yet I was there. No, I did not go to the trial, I did not hear the verdict, because I knew all the time what it would be…” So begins Grant Wiggins, the narrator of Ernest J. Gaines’s powerful exploration of race, injustice, and resistance, A Lesson Before Dying. If young Jefferson, the accused, is confined by the law to an iron-barred cell, Grant Wiggins is no less a prisoner of social convention. University educated, Grant has returned to the tiny plantation town of his youth, where the only job available to him is teaching in the small plantation church school. As Grant struggles to impart a sense of pride to Jefferson before he must face his death, he learns an important lesson as well: heroism is not always expressed through action–sometimes the simple act of resisting the inevitable is enough. Populated by strong, unforgettable characters, Ernest J. Gaines’s A Lesson Before Dying offers a lesson for a lifetime.
The Legend of Buddy Bush by Sheila P. Moses:
In rural Rich Square, NC, the 1947 arrest, trial, escape, and eventual acquittal of African-American Buddy Bush rocked a community and sparked international interest. This fictionalized account is narrated by Pattie Mae, Buddy’s 12-year-old niece, a perceptive “ease dropper” who discovers the depths of prejudice and the strength of family. The child adores Uncle Buddy, who has unexpectedly returned home from Harlem. Pattie Mae’s coming-of-age story re-creates the racial segregation and tension of a small Southern community, demonstrates the loyalty of family, and exposes the heartbreak of injustice. The child’s voice is candid, reflective, humorous, dialectic, and full of colloquialisms and superstitions. Her family and neighbors are well-drawn, idiosyncratic characters bound together by their distrust of the white community. Readers will discover universal truths about fairness, dignity, and compassion, and gain an understanding of the older generation as Pattie Mae realizes that home is where the heart is.
The Native American Voice
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
Arnold Spirit, a goofy-looking dork with a decent jumpshot, spends his time lamenting life on the “poor-ass” Spokane Indian reservation, drawing cartoons (which accompany, and often provide more insight than, the narrative), and, along with his aptly named pal Rowdy, laughing those laughs over anything and nothing that affix best friends so intricately together. When a teacher pleads with Arnold to want more, to escape the hopelessness of the rez, Arnold switches to a rich white school and immediately becomes as much an outcast in his own community as he is a curiosity in his new one. He weathers the typical teenage indignations and triumphs like a champ but soon faces far more trying ordeals as his home life begins to crumble and decay amidst the suffocating mire of alcoholism on the reservation.
Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko
Tayo is a half-white Laguna Indian emotionally stricken by white warfare and almost destroyed by his experiences as a World War II prisoner of the Japanese. Unable to find a place among Native American veterans who are losing themselves in rage and drunkenness, Tayo discovers his connection to the land and to ancient rituals with the help of a medicine man, and comes to understand the need to create ceremonies, to grow and change, in order to survive.
The Feminist Voice
The Uglies by Scott Westerfield
Tally Youngblood lives in a futuristic society that acculturates its citizens to believe that they are ugly until age 16 when they’ll undergo an operation that will change them into pleasure-seeking “pretties.” Anticipating this happy transformation, Tally meets Shay, another female ugly, who shares her enjoyment of hoverboarding and risky pranks. But Shay also disdains the false values and programmed conformity of the society and urges Tally to defect with her to the Smoke, a distant settlement of simple-living conscientious objectors. Tally declines, yet when Shay is found missing by the authorities, Tally is coerced by the cruel Dr. Cable to find her and her compatriots–or remain forever “ugly.” Tally’s adventuresome spirit helps her locate Shay and the Smoke. It also attracts the eye of David, the aptly named youthful rebel leader to whose attentions Tally warms. However, she knows she is living a lie, for she is a spy who wears an eye-activated locator pendant that threatens to blow the rebels’ cover. Ethical concerns will provide a good source of discussion as honesty, justice, and free will are all oppressed in this well-conceived dystopia.
Kissing Kate by Lauren Myracle
It was one thing for someone else to be gay. It was something else entirely if it was me.” Lissa, 16, has been best friends with beautiful Kate for four years, but everything changes when Kate gets drunk at a party, and she and Lissa passionately kiss. Lissa is desperate to talk about it, but Kate wants to pretend that nothing happened. This first novel does a great job of showing the girls’ surprise at the situation and the way their emotions swing from attraction to denial. Funny and anguished, Lissa’s first-person narrative expresses her hurt, anger, and confusion as she tries to date a guy; searches for an adult to talk to (and for a bra that fits); and downloads depressing statistics from the Net about the high suicide rate among gay teens. There’s some contrivance about “lucid dreaming,” with heavy metaphors and connections, but most readers will skim that for the lively realistic story about friends and lovers
The Feminist Voice OR African American Voice
The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
14-year-old Lily Owen, neglected by her father and isolated on their South Carolina peach farm, spends hours imagining a blissful infancy when she was loved and nurtured by her mother, Deborah, whom she barely remembers. These consoling fantasies are her heart’s answer to the family story that as a child, in unclear circumstances, Lily accidentally shot and killed her mother. All Lily has left of Deborah is a strange image of a Black Madonna, with the words “Tiburon, South Carolina” scrawled on the back. The search for a mother, and the need to mother oneself, are crucial elements in this well-written coming-of-age story set in the early 1960s against a background of racial violence and unrest.
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
Celie is a poor black woman whose letters tell the story of 20 years of her life, beginning at age 14 when she is being abused and raped by her father and attempting to protect her sister from the same fate, and continuing over the course of her marriage to “Mister,” a brutal man who terrorizes her. Celie eventually learns that her abusive husband has been keeping her sister’s letters from her and the rage she feels, combined with an example of love and independence provided by her close friend Shug, pushes her finally toward an awakening of her creative and loving self.
