Christopher Myers 'The Apartheid Of Children's Literature'

When kids are younger, they are told that being different is good. And it is, sometimes. A lot of people are different. But, at other times, being different can limit your chances. This is shown in the novel, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian. This novel is about a boy named Junior that is different than the rest of his peers. He is the only Indian going to an all white school. Some of his experiences there show that being different isn’t all that good, sometimes. The book, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie, and the article, “Adding a Disability Perspective When Reading Adolescent Literature” both portray how being different can limit someone’s chances and opportunities.

“Whenever my environment had failed to support or nourish me, I had clutched at books.” –Richard Wright, Black Boy. The author suffered and lived through an isolated society, where books were the only option for him to escape the reality of the world. Wright wrote this fictionalized book about his childhood and adulthood to portray the dark and cruel civilization and to illustrate the difficulties that blacks had, living in a world run by whites.

Since 1982, there have been 11,300 books challenged in the United States. As the number of challenged books continues to rise, society’s exposure to diversity in literature decreases. According to the American Library Association, 51% of the top ten challenged books between 2005 and 2014 featured “diverse content.” Diverse content is defined as works featuring either non-white, LGBT+, or disabled primary characters, or discussions of issues in relation to race, religion, LGBT+ matters, mental illness and/or disabilities, among many other defining characteristics. Censoring such books has the potential to fundamentally stunt the personal growth of society, though many may feel certain information and topics must be censored for the safety of

argue that this novel is not appropriate for our children to read or will discourage blacks because

From the very beginnings of literature, the act of banning books has long been a heated controversy. While almost everyone can say that there are definitely books that they do not want their children reading, the line between what is acceptable and what is not is much harder to define, especially in today’s world. In “How Banning Books Marginalizes Children” (2016), Paul Ringel argues that the current policy of banning books has had a negative impact on children because it has conveyed a message that rebuffs diversity and has contradicted the fact that the power to ban books should be used to “curate children’s choices with the goals of inspiring rather than obscuring new ideas.”

While reading literature, we manage to forget that they have true roots to what is being written and what they actually represent. When looking at the similarities of how literature is represented it obvious to see that there are certain socially constructed groups presented. Although these socially constructed groups do vary throughout literature, they still tend to be very similar. In Alice Walker’s short story “Everyday Use,” Lorraine Hansberry play “A Raisin in the Sun,” and Langston Hughes’s poems “Harlem” and “Theme for English B” they evaluate the social construction of African Americans. What makes these authors so alike is the similarities that they share; being that they were all born in the early 1900’s, are all of African American ethnicity, and acknowledge the social construct of African Americans in these works. Looking at each of these works of literature they represent the struggles that African Americans faced when trying to be seen as equal, by allowing these works to be shown in different insights towards the battles faced in their movement towards being seen as equal.

Comprehensive Annenberg Report on Diversity in Entertainment, showed one-third of females with a script were 33.5 percent, in spite fact that woman represented about half of Americans population. The percentage of characters with dialogue who were non-white was just 28.3 percent, which is roughly 40 percent of America’s

Life experiences often tend to influence thoughts, actions and behavior. It can be seen through poem, criticism or even fictional works. Something as simple as a drawing from a young kid can be influenced by their young years of life to be drawn on a page. Although the experiences can be explained more through literary devices as most authors do to effectively convey to the reader. As in the the case of Zora Neale Hurston's, “How it feels to be colored,” she uses literary devices and personal experiences to show a prideful identify as an African American.

In an article called “Where's the Color in Kids' Lit? Ask the Girl With 1,000 Books (And Counting”, by Meg Anderson, she talks about and to an eleven-year-old girl named Marley Dias. Marley Dias loves to read book, but realize there was hardly any book that had main characters that she could relate to. There were no black girls as the main characters in the books she was reading. Marley started noticed that a lot of the books that her school don’t have much representation in them. Majority, if not all the books, consisted of white boys as the main character. This little eleven-year-old girl decided to start collecting books that had girls like her as main characters and she hope to start a black girl book club. She is also taking this problem to her school district in hopes that they will add more books containing more diversified main characters. She even shares her top five books with black girls as the main character in the article.

Books have been challenged and banned from schools and libraries for countless years. “To Kill a Mockingbird”, “Catcher in the Rye” and “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” are two of the most challenged books of their time. Many parents and faculty member in schools and libraries see these books and others like them as “inappropriate” and “wrong.” (Doyle). Books have been banned throughout history for their takes on issues such as race, damaging lifestyles, Sexual content, violence, and even their political angles (“Banned Books: Reasons for Banning Books.”).

Morgan (2009) writes to convey that African American’s literature has historically been omitted from American libraries and schools. After the civil rights movement, there where some improvements made. Sadly, very few books contained African American main characters. Even during the 20th century, many

Imagine yourself being a person wearing colorful clothes in a room filled with people wearing all black. You obviously stand out. However, every time you try to make friends , people would turn away and at you funny. Feeling alienated or alone may come to mind. Thats a feeling many can relate to Discrimnation in America has been a problem for generations.To gain insight and to combat the issue, it is imporant to read narratives of people that have been though or felt oppressed .The connection between both of these autobiographical essays is how society made them quetion their identities.. By examining “How It feels to be to be Colored Me” by Zora Neale Hurston and “How to Tame a Wild Tongue”by Gloria Anzaldua , the reader can see how the author 's’ individuality makes them strive to figure out their identity in a new environment. Both of these authors retain their confidence and their culture in a new environment in different ways

Racism and prejudice are two upsetting concepts that are still alive today, even in the year 2016. In the movie and television industry, lack of representation for people of color is a heated subject, and in January, the conversation about diversity came to a head when the Academy Awards released its all-white group of acting nominees. As protests ensued, film critic and author Richard Brody published an article in The New Yorker called “The Oscar Whiteness Machine” to explore how “the blinding whiteness” of the Oscars nominations negatively affects opportunities given to actors and what the Oscars reveal about society as a whole (1). For most, an all-white group of nominees is nothing controversial. However, Brody argues that this trend

We have observed how images hold “hidden messages”, discovered who Hugo Cabret is with the help of childhood models, now it is time to unveil how the setting of a story and multicultural within a story, can effect the perception of the read. Stacy Whitman states her findings in Obeso’s discussion, “How Multicultural Is Your Multiverse?” when she states, “there are a lot of mirrors for white readers, who can see themselves represented in fiction, but not quite as many for people of color” (Obeso) In Reading Children’s Literature, Hintz and Tribunella demonstrate that, “when we think about the audience of a book, we need to think about the experiences that can lead to different reader responses.” (361 Hintz, Tribunella) Together, their statements

“Oscars So White” a phrase that began trending on social media sites after the 2016 Academy Awards announce their nominees for Best Actor and Best Actress, it was predominately white for a second year in a row. The movie industry is no stranger to controversy and since its inception it’s constantly been guilty of underrepresenting ethnic people. It’s evident that film is a type of mass media that has a certifiable amount of power to influence audience’s views, yet this platform constantly disregards the need for diversity in favor of stereotypes. Movies such as Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961), Scarface (1983), and Pan (2015) are all guilty of this. The depiction of non-American characters in Hollywood movies are constructed around racial