Assimilation Ideology: Critically Examining Underlying Messages in Multicultural Literature (Bogum Yoon, Anne Simpson, Claudia Haag)

Most teachers would likely say that multicultural literature should be included in an English/Language Arts classroom.  Despite any kind of culture wars in the 1990s over a perceived excess of multiculturalism or political-correctness, it is my impression that educators generally accept that students today will live in a globally-connected world, and therefore need exposure to other cultures.   

Bogum Yoon opens the article with a personal narration of her experience reviewing many children's/YA books related to Korea.  Yoon, like many who advocate for including multicultural literature, believes such books should "promote cultural pluralism, rather than monoculturalism that focuses on assimilation to a dominant culture" (109).  She was troubled, however, when she began to notice a pattern of assimilation in the works she was reviewing.  She decided to take a more formal look at children's multicultural literature to see if this pattern persisted.  Yoon invited two [European] colleagues, Anne Simpson and Claudia Haag, to closely examine 12 works of multicultural literature from a middle school library.  (Although, I should note that they were all picture books.)

The researchers studied the books using two research questions as guides:
1. "What ideologies are embedded in the multicultural text?"
2. "How are the ideologies of assimilation or pluralism present?"
(***To clarify, assimilation here means that the books have an underlying the message that American immigrants can only be successful in America by adapting to dominant American culture and language, while losing aspects of their home culture and language.  Pluralism in this article means that all students, not just minorities or immigrant students, are taught to value others' cultures and languages, without assuming that assimilation is the only desirable outcome.)

The authors asked a local middle school librarian to choose 12 multicultural picture books at random.  The research design was basically for each of the three authors to work separately to classify the 12 books as pluralistic, assimilationist, or neutral/unclear.  Then, the three authors met to discuss and compare notes.  Four of the 12 books possessed a clear narrative of assimilation in the eyes of all three researchers.  Within these four books, the researchers identified two themes.  Two of the books featured characters who first resist the dominant culture, but ultimately assimilate.  The second theme was the good old American dream...that America is "the land of opportunity" (112). 

The authors detail the problematic aspects of the children's books at length, before ending the article with suggestions for teachers when choosing multicultural literature and reading it with students.  The authors recommend that teachers use two overall strategies.  First, choose children's picture books that do not promote unquestioning assimilation into dominant culture.  Alternatively, read the problematic books with students, but ask students questions to help them question the metanarrative of assimilation within the books. 

I thought I was going to love this article.  After all, the only constant through all of my academic work has been a desire to make implicit power structures or social forces...explicit.  Another way of saying this might be that I like to take the world as my text, find patterns, and tell people.  In the past, this has included everything from analyzing the evolution of fairy tale heroines in popular culture and their implications for young women, to looking at the underlying assumptions of the nature of patriotism in the Teaching American History federal grant program.  I even had my 8th grade students look at the immigrant experience in America and get different perspectives on just how much opportunity immigrants often have in "the land of opportunity."  Doing this kind of text analysis for messages about what it means to be American is right up my alley.

But...I actually found this article to be kind of annoying!  (I know, such a helpful comment.)  I think that the authors' overall idea was an important one; multicultural literature that has an underlying message of erasing a culture instead of appreciating it should be exposed.  However, what about the potential value of assimilation, even if simply from a survival perspective?  Or, the dismantling the master's house with the master's tools argument?  Immigrants should of course retain aspects of their home culture, but what good is that if they cannot survive within the system that we have?  If I moved to Barcelona, for example, I would not resist speaking Spanish just so that I could refuse to submit to the dominant culture. 

My overall point here is that the entire issue is very complicated, and I felt that the authors' portrayal of the issue was along the lines of assimilation = bad, pluralism = good.  The authors were from such a strong critical theory perspective, that I worried they were unable to see the issue with the complexity I think it deserves.  What is social justice?  Whose definition of justice?  How is justice defined? 

Yoon, B., Anne Simpson, and Claudia Haag.  (2010).  "Assimilation Ideology: Critically Examining Underlying Messages in Multicultural Literature."  Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, Vol. 54, No. 2 (October 2010), pp. 109-118.