Insider/Outsider Debate

While reading these articles, I was surprised to find how much my opinions and views changed with each article I read. When I read Shannon's article, I thought- wow he really knows what hes talking about. And then I went on to Sims-Bishops article and then thought- wow Shannon didn't really know what he was talking about. So I felt very overwhelmed with opinions on the issues at hand. What really stood out to me was during Sims Bishop's article he states, "You have to know a culture intimately if you're going to reflect it accurately in your fiction" (Bishop, 1994). I felt that this statement embodied exactly how I feel on this topic. I do not find myself qualified to write accurate fiction on any other cultural group but my own, and I find it very hard to believe that many authors feel qualified when they do write about other cultures. I think because we are dealing with children's literature, a lot of authors unfortunatly tend to forget about the accurateness of the text because they don't think the children will be able to tell the difference. I really like how Bishop stated, "multicultural children's literature is the asm as children's literature. Why do we need a seperate term?" To a white, middle class young woman, of coarse multicultural to me is going to include an asian, an african american, a hispanic or a homosexual individual or a number of other things that I am not. It is multicultural to me because that is different from who I am and what I know. But to an asian, middle class young woman, I might find that reading a story about a white girl is multicultural to me because it is unknown culture to me. Going back to the debate on insider and outsider, I definetly feel that it is important to know the facts of a culture before stereotypes are simply printed in the story. Whether that means you lived the facts or you have researched the facts, the idea behind the story will refelect an accurate portrayal of the culture. Having lived the experiences you are writing about I feel is icing on the cake. It will make the story that much better because you can tell the story in a way that expresses the emotions of that culture because you know what that emotion is. Emotion cannot be researched or discovered, it has to be personally felt.

What I really want to look more into in class is why some author's like to have it known that they are writing about a culture of their own background while some author's don't publish that idea. Do we think we will assume the literature more accurate if we know it is written by the culture? I would find it very intriguing to read a few children's books that do not include the author's photo in the back of the book, and then determine which book was written by the author of that culture.