Waking Up From the American Dream: Representation of Class in Children’s Literature

• In Event: Children’s Literature, Identity, and Power: Textual Ideologies and Students’ Collaborative Inquiry

Abstract

Even though socioeconomic divisions persist in the United States, the scholarship of children’s literature lacks class analysis. The representation of Mexican American migrant farmworkers in children’s literature, a cultural experience largely shaped by the power relations of class alongside race and gender, has increased over the past 20 years, making visible a group rendered invisible in the U.S. landscape. Classifying stories about migrant agricultural laborers under the literary category of multicultural children’s literature can further marginalize this population by portraying their circumstances as private, personal, and cultural. While these stories closely reflect the poverty that families endure, they leave these conditions with communities. In this study, I theorize a critical multicultural analysis of children’s literature, examining power in text and images.

Author

• Maria Jose Botelho, University of Massachusetts - Amherst