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Professional Book Reviews
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Literacy in the Multicultural Classroom:
Broadening Definitions and Visions
Kindel Nash, Cindy Morton-­Rose, Lisa Reid,
Erin Miller, and Sabina Mosso-­Taylor
A
wide body of literature emphasizes the
transformational role of education that
moves away from Eurocentric notions of
what counts as literacy (Genishi & Dyson, 2009;
Gorski, 2010; Kinloch, 2010; Long, Hutchinson,
& Neiderhiser, 2011; Nieto, 2002; Purcell-­Gates,
2007). As these texts have made their way into
the hands of teachers across the nation, educators
raise new questions about what it means to put such
critical and multicultural pedagogy into practice in
today’s literacy classrooms.
The works reviewed here represent some of the
newest and best texts about multicultural education.
In Multicultural Teaching in the Early Childhood
Classroom: Approaches, Strategies, and Tools, Preschool–2nd grade, Mariana Souto-­Manning (2013)
offers an up-­to-­date definition of multicultural education, highlighting the teaching practices of five
distinctive educators. In A Critical Inquiry Framework for K–12 Teachers: Lessons and Resources
from the U.N. Rights of the Child, JoBeth Allen and
Lois Alexander (2013) help educators consider how
to respond to classroom injustice through building a
critical inquiry framework that honors the rights of
each student, using the United Nations Convention
on the Rights of the Child. In Interrupting Hate:
Homophobia in Schools and What Literacy Can Do
about It, Mollie Blackburn (2012) provides research
stories that demonstrate the importance of teachers
as allies to LGBTQQ students/families by interrupting hate speech and creating safe spaces that
foster positive identity and agency. In her memoir,
Bird of Paradise: How I Became a Latina, Raquel
Cepeda (2013) helps readers understand the power
and importance of Latina/o ancestral histories, providing a deep context that enhances our understanding of what it means to nurture Latina/o students’
positive identities. Each of these texts contributes
uniquely to answering questions and spurring
thinking about how multicultural education might
be realized in classrooms today.
Multicultural
Teaching in the
Early Childhood
Classroom:
Approaches,
Strategies, and
Tools, Preschool–
2nd Grade
by Mariana Souto-­Manning
(Ed.), Teachers College
Press, 2013, 153 pp.,
ISBN 978-­0-­8077-­5406-­1
A preservice teacher recently confronted me with
the query, “We are always talking education for
social justice. But how do you actually do it?”
Souto-­Manning’s book provides insights into
how to do multicultural education. While not a
“how-­to” guide, this book presents a “critical
and situated” (p. 8) sampling of approaches,
each of which “problematize dominant views
of learning” (p. 8). The book provides teachers
of young children with strategies to “lift the
moment[s]” when inequity or unfairness arises in
our classrooms rather than shutting students down
with our adult logic.
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Souto-­Manning first presents an action-­
oriented definition of multicultural education as a
transformative and critical process. The bulk of the
book then focuses on the actual strategies and tools
teachers can use, each chapter forefronting the
multicultural teaching practices used by teachers
across diverse contexts (Mary Cowhey, 2nd grade;
Dana Bently, preschool; Janice Baines, 1st grade;
Carol Felderman, 2nd grade; and Henry Morales
Padrón, kindergarten).
I was heartened (as always) by Mary Cowhey’s
voice as she described the implementation of two
multicultural practices: interviews and critical
inquiry. Cowhey eloquently tells the story of
how she creates an integrated, standards-­aligned
environment conducive to interviews and critical
inquiry by using authentic children’s literature,
bringing experts into the classroom, and “doing
philosophy with children” (p. 33). No less
inspiring is the story of Dana Bently’s use of
culture circles (Giroux, 1985) as spaces where
young children “name and change unfair practices
and inequitable issues in our own classrooms and
(pre)schools” (p. 56). Bently offers an example
of a two-­week-­long culture circle in her class that
began when a preschool boy declared that purple
was a girl’s color.
Then, we learn how Janice Baines utilized her
first graders’ home and community literacies to
drive her standards-­driven language arts and social
studies curriculum. Viewing students’ home and
community literacies as well as African American
Language as “real and meaningful culturally
specific practices that shape many children’s and
adults’ interactions and experiences” (p. 77),
Baines describes the way she begins every
school year with visits to students’ homes and
communities to learn about who they are and to
“connect with them as human beings” (p. 78).
Along with home visits, she conducts oral history
interviews and projects to bring students’ homes
and communities into the classroom through
making class books. Baines listens to the radio and
learns the songs her students sing; then, keeping
the melody, she rewrites the lyrics and uses the
songs as shared reading songs/text. One much-­
loved song is titled, “I Can Read Swag,” adopting
the melody of “Pretty Boy Swag.”
Next we read about Carol Felderman’s
use of digital literacies as a powerful tool for
multicultural teaching in second grade. Students in
Felderman’s class were upset that their annual field
trip had been canceled due to budget cuts. She then
facilitated a fundraising and social-­action project
where students met with the principal, circulated a
petition, and conducted a lemonade stand/bake sale
to raise funds for their field trip, documenting their
progress all the while with digital podcasts. We
also read of Henry Padrón’s practice of storytelling
and story acting to create spaces for kindergartners
to negotiate change. Padrón introduces children
to theatre through games and read-­alouds (which
also help build the classroom community and are
great during transition times) and then moves onto
various forms of “real” theatre, such as spect-­
acting and Forum theatre.
The final chapter helps teachers codify the
host of tools and strategies detailed throughout the
book—helpful support for teachers and preservice
teachers as they develop a plan to get started in
their quest to “do” multicultural education in early
childhood settings. (KN)
A Critical Inquiry
Framework for
K–12 Teachers:
Lessons and
Resources from the
U.N. Rights of the
Child
by JoBeth Allen and
Lois Alexander (Eds.),
Teachers College Press,
2013, 198 pp., ISBN
978-­0-­8077-­5394-­1
(paperback)
[Article 2] applies to all children, whatever their
race, religion, or abilities; whatever they think
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or say, whatever type of family they come from. It
doesn’t matter where children live, what language
they speak, what their parents do, whether they are
boys or girls, what their culture is, whether they
have a disability or whether they are rich or poor.
No child should be treated unfairly on any basis.
These words, from the United Nations
Convention on the Rights of the Child (ROC),
greet readers and serve as the first invitation to
take a critical, response-­to-­injustice stance in
this dynamic and powerful book. The opening
pages immediately sparked my interest as they
clearly outlined a critical content framework and
highlighted key components for the development
of a pervasive classroom culture of critical inquiry.
If you are an educator drawn to critical pedagogy
and inquiry, then you will find comfort within
these pages as they continue to move you toward
socially just and equitable teaching practices.
If you are an educator who has not yet engaged
in critical pedagogy and inquiry, then prepare
to embark on your transformative journey with
this book.
The authors, elementary through high school
teachers, demonstrate ROC as an invaluable
resource for critical K–12 educators. Through
the creation of this book, they engaged in their
own process of inquiry wherein they discussed,
implemented, and critiqued critical pedagogy that
“honors student voices and engages students in
critical inquiry into social issues relevant to their
lives such as race, social class, language, and other
aspects of citizenship in a democracy still under
construction” (p. 2). Each chapter opens with a
critical invitation, centered on exploring a specific
article of ROC, and invites readers to explore,
connect with, and challenge the issues presented.
The critical inquiry framework and projects
described within the chapters can be adapted to
and/or easily implemented in various classrooms
and educational contexts.
Chapters Two and Three of the text are
specifically designed for primary and elementary
grades. They provide invitations to explore rights,
such as the right to health and well-­being and
the rights of students with disabilities (italicized
phrases in this review are portions of the UN rights
of the child [ROC] that introduce the various
chapters of the book). Chapter One, for example,
details a first-­grade project in which children are
invited to choose from books centered on themes
of poverty, peace, power, and action and asked to
think about questions such as, “What do people of
poverty look like?” [and] “How do the characters
of the book treat them?” (p. 24). Chapters Four
and Five are designed to explore issues pertaining
to the respect and rights of immigrant students
and families, such as respect for the values and
culture of parents and protection from deportation
and family separation. Chapter Four details how
Stephen, a teacher in Georgia, implemented
a family support group called LIFE (Latinos
for Involvement in Family Education) in an
elementary school.
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Chapters Six, Seven, and Eight provide
invitations, designed for high school students, to
engage in inquiries that explore additional rights,
such as the right to an adequate standard of living
and rights to culture, identity, and freedom of
thought. Chapter Eight specifically invites students
to explore ways they can work for human rights
through movements such as PeaceJam (a global
movement that connects young people with
Nobel laureates). The final chapter of the book
presents an accessible annotated bibliography that
invites teachers and students to explore children’s
literature for teaching the rights of the child.
The authors hope that each chapter will raise
questions, generate divergent perspectives, and
spark teachers’ own inquiries. They also urge
educators to be the “adult coalitions” [to help
students of all ages] “win language rights to free
speech and social criticism” (Shor, 2009, p. 284).
Allen and Alexander quote poet and activist June
Jordan (1980) in proclaiming that as critical
educators, “We are the ones we have been waiting
for.” This book, in its entirety, is a must read and a
critical resource we have all been waiting for. (LR)
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Interrupting Hate:
Homophobia in
Schools and What
Literacy Can Do
about It
by Mollie V. Blackburn,
Teachers College Press,
2012, 116 pp., ISBN
978-­0-­8077-­5273-­9
In the sea of literature
intended to help
us understand
how students are
underserved in schools when they do not fit the
narrowly defined norm, Blackburn’s powerful book
sheds much needed light on issues of homophobia
and heterosexism in schools. In so doing, she
highlights their insidiously negative effect on
Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer,
Questioning (LGBTQQ), and straight youth alike.
Part I of Blackburn’s book focuses on the
problem. Providing stories of students who feel the
impact of the daily abuse that LGBTQQ students
face in schools by students and teachers, she writes
about how even teachers who may be considered
allies sometimes fail to interrupt or advocate
on behalf of LGBTQQ youth. For example,
Blackburn cites that “less than a fifth of the
students reported that school personnel frequently
intervened (“most of the time” or “always”) when
homophobic remarks and negative remarks about
gender expression were made in their presence”
(p. 6). This work clearly demonstrates how
lack of both school support and opportunities
to engage in experiences in which students are
positively validated for who they are has a negative
impact on students’ academic achievement and
literacy learning. Blackburn describes how well-­
intentioned attempts by some teachers to address
homophobia in schools have at times served to
“exacerbate, rather than alleviate, homophobia” (p.
12). She offers many suggestions, gleaned from
her work with LGBTQQ students, allies, and their
teachers, to promote positive experiences, giving
specific examples about how such support can lead
to powerful literacy learning that may be otherwise
closed down.
Part II highlights how LGBTQQ youth serve
as agents and activists. Blackburn describes The
Attic, a positive community resource that offers a
safe space/place where LGBTQQ celebrate their
identities, receive support, and collaborate and
share images and experiences that celebrate and
support each other. A form of agency for LGBTQQ
youth is the use of literacy. Art, poems, books, and
writing serve to give voice to those who are too
often silenced in schools. Helping to bridge the
experiences from The Attic to school, Blackburn
highlights the ways in which The Speakers’
Bureau, a group of people at The Attic, entered
schools to educate students and teachers through
stories and presentations illuminating issues of
homophobia and heterosexism. Through a variety
of vignettes, Blackburn describes ways in which
literacy serves to support LGBTQQ youth and the
important role teachers and student allies have in
this process.
Part III addresses students and teachers as
allies. Blackburn helps answer the question:
“How do people learn to become allies?” In this
third section, she turns the focus from agency to
activism, suggesting that becoming student or
teacher allies requires repeated actions beyond a
single or isolated event. She suggests that teachers
of English select, read, and discuss LGBTQQ-­
themed literature in classrooms, and she provides
a powerful list of advice/values for allies as they
work to contradict homophobic and heterosexist
contexts. She urges that “all of us, not just
LGBTQQ youth, can work against heterosexism
and homophobia in classrooms and schools”
(p. 62) and that literacy is a critical tool in this
process.
Although many of the vignettes describe
experiences from middle school to high school,
Blackburn’s suggestions are applicable for any
classroom. This book is a must-­read for all
teachers, administrators, and educators who want
to make schools a more equitable place for all
students. (SMT)
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Bird of Paradise:
How I Became
Latina
by Raquel Cepeda, Atria
Books, 2013, 336 pp.,
ISBN 978-­1-­4516-­3586
Although Raquel
Cepeda is not an
educator, this is a
memoir every literacy
educator should
read. Bravely facing
a complex past built
on personal struggles shaped by ever-­present
issues of race and identity, Cepeda accomplishes
numerous goals through this text. Using catchy
sarcasm and no-­nonsense prose, she illuminates
the historical and social construction of race in
Hispaniola, including her own parents’ birthplace
in the Dominican Republic, as she also unravels
the attempted whitification (Kinloch, 2010) of her
family as they emigrated to America.
Not solely a memoir, however, Cepeda
also guides the reader through the science of
mitochondrial DNA testing in an attempt to
know the ancestral origins of her past, spanning
generations shaped and reshaped by migration,
imperialism, slavery, and resistance to European
oppression. Cepeda makes a case for the
importance of more studies using mitochondrial
DNA testing to trace Latino histories as an
alternative or supplement to genealogical studies,
which can be rife with error due to faulty and
limiting census records, family name changes, and
destroyed genealogical data. Ultimately, Cepeda
argues for the understanding of narratives of Latino
history through the use of mitochondrial DNA
testing that challenges Eurocentric perspectives:
“If more studies are done, more pre-­Columbian
history—silenced due to genocide by the academia
and European chroniclers—will reveal a rich and
diverse narrative” (p. 221).
Cepeda writes in her introduction that she has
“always been intrigued by the concept of race” (p.
xiv). As a light-­skinned Latina growing up in New
York City in the 1970s and ‘80s, Cepeda struggled
to find where she fit into her racially and culturally
diverse social world. Influenced by hip-­hop, graffiti,
abandonment, violence, and her father’s quest to
turn her into an accomplished tennis and piano
player, Cepeda writes, “At home, Papi said I wanted
to be Black because I love hip-­hop, and a low-­
class Dominican because I like graffiti and b-­boys.
The kids at [my Catholic school] said I wanted to
be white because I played tennis and lived with
a [light-­skinned stepmother].” Cepeda’s quest to
make sense of the contradictions of her racial and
ethnic identity—complicated by her father’s own
low self-­esteem and his reluctance to recognize,
much less celebrate, an origin that tied their family
to Hispaniola via West Africa—was further fueled
by her dissonance from and resistance to the
Eurocentric curricula to which she was subjected
at school. Disengaged by her teachers who
pigeonholed her as a combative drug user, Cepeda
writes, “What we learn at school can’t possibly
foster a sense of pride in our heritage and the parts
of ourselves that aren’t visibly European. If Latino-­
Americans accept what we’re taught about our
history as truth, then the indigenous peoples of the
Americas were godless primitives given salvation
by the grace of missionaries and their other
European benefactors” (p.152).
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With clear implications for the importance of
culturally relevant pedagogy and counter-­narratives
in school to foster positive identities, Cepeda’s
struggles are what ultimately set her on a quest for
a different future for her daughter. As a young adult
and a mother, she partnered with DNA experts,
local historians, geneticists, and anthropologists to
travel halfway across the world to trace the lineage
of her ancestry. Discovering a complex web of
colonization and decolonization in Hispaniola,
Cepeda provides a historical and political account
of the island spanning centuries; she also gives a
portrayal of current issues and offers the possibility
of hope for today’s generation of young Latinas
discovering their identities in a world where race
continues to matter. Cepeda calls out the crime of
perpetuating white racial superiority in cultural
and school contexts while sharing a narrative of the
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resilience and resistance of Dominican people. She
advocates for the importance of Dominicans and
Dominican Americans not “disremembering their
African ancestry . . . despite [the] miseducation
across Latin America and The United States” about
their history (p. 251).
Although Cepeda does not speak to educators
directly, insights from her memoir are critical for
literacy educators to understand how innovative
curricula are to be designed to foster positive
identity development for young Latinas. Cepeda
herself is leading the way as she works with teens
to use mitochondrial DNA testing to trace their
ancestral lineage, hoping that the results of the
testing will help youth who often feel as if they are
not “American enough” to the white community
and not accepted in Black American communities.
Her ultimate goal is to help young Latinas
“enhance who they are, maybe confirm something
they knew intrinsically” (p. 273). (EM)
References
Genishi, C., & Dyson, A. H. (2009). Children, language,
and literacy: Diverse learners in diverse times. New
York, NY: Teachers College Press.
Giroux, H. (1985). Introduction. In P. Friere, The politics of
education: Culture, power, and liberation (pp. xi–xxvi).
Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvin.
Gorski, P. (2010). The challenge of defining multicultural
education. Retrieved from http://www.edchange.org/
multicultural/.
Jordan, J. (1980). Poem for South African women. In
J. Jordan, Passion: New poems, 1977–1980 (p. 278).
Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
Kinloch, V. (2010). Harlem on our minds: Place, race, and
the literacies of urban youth. New York, NY: Teacher
College Press.
Long, S., Hutchinson, W., & Neiderhiser, J. (2011).
Supporting students in a time of core standards:
English language arts, grades preK–2. Urbana, IL:
National Council of Teachers of English.
Nieto, S. (2002). Language, culture, and teaching: Critical
perspectives for a new century. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Purcell-­Gates, V. (2007). Cultural practices of literacy:
Case studies of language, literacy, social practice, and
power. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Shor, I. (2009). What is critical literacy? In A. Darder, M.
Baltodano, & R. Torres (Eds.), The critical pedagogy
reader (2nd ed., pp. 282–304). New York, NY:
Routledge.
United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.
(2009). Parental rights. Retrieved from http://www
.parentalrights.org/index.asp?Type=B_BASIC&SEC=
%7B98172987-­5D33-­4A41-­AF04-­84F6726222C3%7D.
Kindel Nash is an assistant professor of Language & Literacy/Urban Teacher Education at the University
of Missouri, Kansas City. She can be reached at [email protected]. Cindy Morton-­Rose is an assistant
professor at Meredith College. She can be reached at [email protected]. Lisa Reid is a doctoral
candidate in Language & Literacy at the University of South Carolina. She can be reached at
[email protected]. Erin Miller is an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte.
She can be reached at [email protected]. Sabina Mosso-­Taylor is a lead teacher in Richland County
School District II in Columbia, South Carolina. She can be reached at [email protected].
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