A Family Tree: Examining Diverse Literature With a Persona Poem From the Stacks

• In Event: Fairmont Roundtable Session Eight
  In Roundtable Session: The Poem as Tool and Home: Poetics, Identity, and Family in Educational Research (Table 13)

Abstract

When introducing the theme for the 2023 AERA Conference, Rich Milner spoke of interrogating research, suggesting a genealogy. The following conceptual effort constructs a literature review of existing research concerning diverse books using arts-based methods. The paper is a persona poem told through the lens of a diverse book who, realizing it is alone among non diverse titles, constructs a family tree of sorts to understand why there are not more like it. Through a poetic memoir, it asks why there are not more diverse books, and what historically has allowed the literary discrepancy to develop and continue.

Author

• Zachary R. Urquhart, Midlothian ISD
  Presenting Author