Well, I discovered that I’m bad at reading the chapter names. Perhaps I am so focused on the narrative as way of organizing thought that the chapter titles which interrupt it are deemed inconsequential. I think I’m going to go back and write them all in. There were no chapter numbers so I had been going just by page numbers but I think the chapter names bring an interesting focus to the following text as well as foreshadow. Maybe I actually prefer to read ahead blindly without having a preconceived idea in my head.
As far as me as a reader,I feel like I’ve been a little bit less critical with this book than usual for me. I think it is an excellent book which makes it easier to rave over rather than critique and critiquing is also usually something I do at the end in retrospect rather than as I go. Also, I think that I wold be less critical of books that are critical of dominant culture than books that are critical and portray negative attributes of minority cultures due to my position as a White person trying to disintegrate my “Whiteness” while trying to move on to establishing a “non-racist White identity” without falling into patterns of reintegration. It really is hard to see people who you respected indicate feelings at odds with what you’re learning. It’s never anything blatant, because that would be easy to deal with. It seems like it’s the little things...
How interesting that while text is colour blind, stories and books are not. This book seems to be written in standard English, with some exceptions for dialog, following the standard conventions of children’s literature. Since it’s written in acquiescence to the dominant paradigm, does that mean it can not truly express multicultural feelings and differences?
Thinking more about the skin color of characters in books, how important is the cover at setting up expectations of ethnicity? Delphine wasn’t described in colour until maybe page 17 when she’s describing her mom. We seem to be missing some of the obligatory physical description of the main character, although this comes out much more gracefully throughout a little more of the story. But now I’m questioning if White people read all stories as if they were about White people unless the character is specifically described otherwise, do people of other skin colors see the main character as them selves or have they been enculturated to see them as White as well? Last week we were talking about gender in my class and one of my students who appears caucasian noted that when she read about a male character she often forgot that the main character was male and started to referring to him as “she” while another of my students, this young woman from Korea around middle school time period, shared that she had the opposite experience. She felt herself consumed by the main character so that she thought of herself as male when reading about a boy rather than projecting her gender on the main character, not that she used those specific words to describe her experience. Is this indicative of a different way or reading as a minority rather than of the dominant culture or just a personal experience that differs based on personality? Or is personality that affected by ethnicity? It certainly seems to be a major, if not the major, force at play in minority experiences, especially as it is tied to economics in a way that can’t be separated.
Do I use the right words? Without practice at using the correct words and phrases, how can anyone know what to say? I am enjoying exploring, thinking of things differently, but that also means that I’m using other language to try to talk about things. I will need to create openings for people to tell me if my words and phrases are offensive.
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