Waking Up From the American Dream: Critical Multicultural Analysis of Class in Children's Literature

• In Event: Rousing Ourselves From Fever Dreams of American Myths: Critical Multicultural Analyses and Dialogic Discussions of Children's and Young Adult Literature

Abstract

Even though socioeconomic inequalities 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-plus 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 personal and cultural. While these stories closely reflect the poverty that families endure, they leave these conditions with communities. Critical multicultural analysis offers tools to read how class, race, and gender are rendered through words and images.

Author

• Maria Jose Botelho, University of Massachusetts - Amherst