Michael Angelo
20131203
Language, Literacy and Learning
Multicultural Literature for Young Adults
Title: Typee
Author: Herman Melville
Illustrator: N/A
Publisher: New York: Penguin. 1463748019
Number of Pages/Grade Level: 261 p
Genre: Fiction
Annotation: A semi-autobiographical account of Melville’s personal experience living as a captive in the south Pacific, Typee is a story detailing the journeys of
Tommo as he enlists on a whaling ship, sails the world for 15 months, lands on the recently-colonized island, abandons ship, and lives among the cannibal natives of the island. Falling between the lines of fact and fiction, Typee serves as a bridge between American romanticism and modernism, established Melville’s reputation as a writer, set many of the standards later authors would try to emulate, and helped define the postcolonial literary movement.
Teaching Activities/Strategies:
1. Invasion! - Since many of the themes mentioned in the novel pertain to Western colonization of the Pacific, write a short story where the
2. protagonist’s values and culture are attacked and invaded by alien forces. The story can be a real event that happened (like Jehovah’s
Witnesses knocking on your door), or can be completely fictional (like actual aliens coming to Earth to destroy all and only Da Vinci paintings).
Fill in the Blank – Because of the age in which the book was written,
Melville had to leave a number of blanks in the text where either he or the publisher thought American sensibilities would be offended. This is especially true of passages pertaining to missionaries and sex. The mission is to find any one blank or gap in the storyline and elaborate upon it, paying attention to the style, tone and diction of the original passage.
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Title: Maus
Author: Art Spiegelman
Illustrator: Art Spiegelman
Publisher: New York: Pantheon. 9780679406419
Number of Pages/Grade Level: 296 p
Genre: Graphic Novel

Annotation: Written to preserve his family’s misery and misfortune during the
Holocaust, Spiegelman’s Maus tells the story of a Jewish family living in Nazicontrolled Europe during World War II. The unique plot, intricate illustrations and unconventional use of anthropomorphism, earned the book several awards after publication – including a Pulitzer – and established the novel as a prized addition to the American canon.
Teaching Activities/Strategies:
1. Show Me, Don’t Tell Me – The graphic novel gives authors a whole new medium in which they can communicate to readers, so the assignment for this text is to tell a story without the use of any words at all. For artistic types, a comic sans captions would work but
2. untalented drawers need not fret – pantomime works as well.
This book actually sparked some debate on the distinctions between fiction, nonfiction and graphic novels when it was published. Some critics labeled it as fiction simply based on the fact that it was a comic, while the author issued statements to critics that the work is nonfiction in its entirety. What’s your stance on the subject? Is Maus fiction, nonfiction, a children’s book, a comic book, a biography?
Prepare an essay for discussion.
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Title: The Kite Runner
Author: Khaled Hosseini
Illustrator: N/A
Publisher: New York: Penguin. 1573222453
Number of Pages/Grade Level: 371 p
Genre: Fiction
Annotation: Following the life of Amir, a wealthy, young man living in Afghanistan, as he flees his homeland in the face of Soviet invasion and returns years later to save his boyhood friend, The Kite Runner offers a unique perspective on family and friendly relationships, the immigrant’s experience, returning home after being abroad for several years, and the current conflict taking place in Afghanistan. The millions of copies sold, the translation of the book into several different world languages, the rewriting of the novel in a different genre, and the film adaptation all speak to the importance of this novel in the contemporary American literary scene.
Teaching Activities/Strategies:
1. Am I a Giant? – Many of the places we spent a lot of time at as kids get burned into our memories as lasting experiences that we remember for the rest of our lives. Yet when we go back and revisit the places as adults they may seem strange while remaining familiar. Going to your old childhood house, for example, might make you feel like a giant when you see the place from new height. Detail an experience where

2. you revisit a place from your past and the emotions connected to the experience.
Character Collage – Pick any character from the text and put together a collage of images, drawings or objects that tell us more about the character. All completed collages will be presented and hung in the classroom.
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Title: Worlds Apart
Author: Dorthee Lang and Smitha Murthy
Illustrator: N/A
Publisher: Rocklin, CA: Folded Word. 1610191021
Number of Pages/Grade Level: 242 p
Genre: Nonfiction
Annotation: Telling the true story of how two unlikely friends meet over the
Internet and grow as friends and world citizens, Worlds Apart is told in a sequence of emails between the authors and takes place in several countries all over the world. Besides offering a fresh take on the way people define friendships, Worlds
Apart touches on themes of globalization and cultural identity that students will enjoy discovering.
Teaching Activities/Strategies:
1. Weird Friendships – Because the authors of this book never met while
2. they were writing the emails that would become the text, this assignment is meant to explore the different ways people can display friendship. Think of a close, personal friend and tell me some details of your friendship that is unique to your friendship. Inside jokes, nicknames, unusual gifts and the like are all acceptable.
Only Spoken Words – Narrative is often used synonymously with story but this is incorrect because narratives, by definition, have a narrator to tell the reader the story. Worlds Apart is a non-narrative story told through the discussions of the authors. This assignment calls for students to create a dialogue with another student that tells a story without a narrator. Think of Hemingway’s Hills like White
Elephants. All scripts will need to be performed and discussed.
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Title: Native Son
Author: Richard Wright
Illustrator: N/A
Publisher: New York: HarperCollins. 0061148504
Number of Pages/Grade Level: 544
Genre: Fiction

Annotation: Native Son follows Bigger Thomas as he lives his disadvantaged life in
Chicago in the 1930s and culminates with his murder of a well-off white woman and disposal of her body in a furnace. The book not only depicts race relations in
America in the ‘30s but has received critical acclaim since its publication.
Teaching Activities/Strategies:
1. A Work of Perspective – Native Son is written from the viewpoint of the black protagonist who is guilty of murder, while To Kill a
2.
Mockingbird is written from the viewpoint of a white girl who is innocent. What differences do these two perspective bring to the texts? Is Bigger a reliable narrator despite his guilt?
Backwards Approach – Wright wrote the book to detail the black experience in America during the 1930s, but if his goal was social change, why did he choose to make his protagonist so evil? What’s the effect this creates? Have you ever argued by making your opponent’s points for them?
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Title: The Intuitionist
Author: Colson Whitehead
Illustrator: N/A
Publisher: New York: Random House. 0385493002
Number of Pages/Grade Level: 255 p
Genre: Fiction
Annotation: Lila Mae is New York’s first black safety inspector and she’s stellar at her job – not even having to inspect the elevators but instead relying on her natural intuition to sense danger. This poses threats to the Elevator Guild who stage an elevator accident to frame Lila Mae and consolidate Empiricists power within the organization.
Teaching Activities/Strategies:
1. Which Are You? – Think of the two conflicting organizations in the
2. novel – the intuitionists and the empiricists. The Intuitionists follow their gut feelings and repair only the broken parts of elevators, while the Empiricists follow the doctrine perfectly and inspect every square inch of the elevator. Which group appeals more to you? Where do you fit?
Tone Sweet Tone – Describe the tone of the novel and the author’s way of depicting the events taking place on page. Is it satirical, serious, philosophical or pretentious? Find an excerpt from the text to support your assessment.
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Title: The Jungle
Author: Upton Sinclair

Illustrator: N/A
Publisher: Mineola, NY: Dover Publications. 0486419231
Number of Pages/Grade Level: 320 p
Genre: Fiction
Annotation: The Jungle is a story about the immigrant’s experience in Chicago at the turn of the twentieth century. Besides offering a unique perspective on the squalor and sub-human living conditions of the characters, the text talks to the state of the country at that time as well, referencing wages, working conditions, and of course meat packing procedures.
Teaching Activities/Strategies:
1. It’s What’s for Dinner -- Because of this novel’s effect on the standards in which we prepare meat in this country, this task requires students to look at the different types of meat people eat all over the world.
2.
Students will put together a poster board showing the ingredients or processing of the meat. So hot dogs, Spam, haggis, McDonald’s burgers, dog meat in Korea, whale meat in Japan, fish farms, Kosher meat preparation, and the like are all fair game.
Tell Your Story – The vast majority of Americans today were not native to the region and their ancestors made the decision to move here. Do some family research and find out who from your family made the trek, where the settled, how they found work, what they wore, etc.
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Title: The Godfather
Author: Mario Puzo
Illustrator: N/A
Publisher: New York: Penguin. 9780451167712
Number of Pages/Grade Level: 496 p
Genre: Fiction
Annotation: Even though The Godfather isn’t a story pertaining to racial identity, its publication and subsequent film adaptations speak to the novel’s importance in defining the ethnic experience in America. Following the Corleone family from
Vito’s flee of Sicily to Michael’s ascension to the leader of the crime ring, The
Godfather juxtaposes the American dream and the immigrant’s experience with the corruption of big business, government and organized crime.
Teaching Activities/Strategies:
1. Values, Ethics and Laws – While many people in America today lived according to the laws of the land, many people, like the characters in this novel, choose not to live according to these rules. What motivates these characters to be so villainous? Is it a matter of differing values?

2.
At what point should people be told to forfeit their values and cultural norms to uphold the laws where they live?
Patriot or Hypocrite? – Michael’s character goes through several important transformations through the novel – joining the Marines to defend America during WWII, taking over the family crime ring, his growth of understanding business, and his relationships with other characters – especially the women. But at one point in the novel,
Michael must defend himself in court and he refers to himself as a patriot. Is he telling the truth (does he truly believe this?), and what do you think? Is Michael a subversive criminal or an untraditional capitalist?
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