Becoming (Other)Wise brings home the meaning of multicultural literature education. It examines how teachers and their students can learn to respond to literature about cultural perspectives other than their own. This book brims with instructional strategies and curriculum suggestions for becoming wiser about others and hence ourselves. The authors detail culturally responsive approaches to significant titles, such as Song of Solomon and Things Fall Apart, among others. We listen to transcribed student discussions, read student writing, absorb student and teacher reflections on such matters as race, ethnicity, and gender, for example. While all are approached through the metaphorical world of literature, all are rooted in the reality of increasingly diverse classrooms and communities.
Ruth Vinz (author of the award-winning Composing a Teaching Life) and four contributing teacher-authors move us quickly past the abstractness we associate with multicultural literature pedagogy. They place us in classroom settings, where real kids come to embrace the worlds and lives of others through literary texts. An important, timely work for all secondary English teachers.
