Day of the Dead and Multiculturalism

It is often said that when you teach, you learn. In my experience it is entirely true. When I was first out of college, doing my student teaching at Willingboro High School, I was assigned to teach a class called Minority Literature. The woman who was supposed to be my mentor teacher, disappeared - no books, no instructions - nothing. She simply melted away to the teacher's lounge or somewhere else. I am grateful to her for that. Since I knew NOTHING about minority literature, I was forced to educate myself. And when you are going to face a group of high school teenagers, especially in the rebellious 1970's, you want to be prepared, so I prepared.

First, because I am an artist and a writer, I tend to think out of the box, so I had a broader idea of what constituted a minority. Also because it was the 70's, the era of Civil Rights struggles and farm workers struggles, the idea of who is a minority was open for discussion. I was an ardent feminist (and I am still a feminist, though I have gotten old and my ardor is faded away). So, naturally, I thought of Gender. And because I was teaching in a predominaently African American high school, Race was number 1 on the list of Minority groups. So I broke it down into broad categories: Race, Gender, Religion, Disability (the movement for access had just gotten underway) and Ethnic Minorities. I began to read everything I could find in each of these categories. My education in American Literature and World Literature had left ALL of these categories OUT - not because they didn't exist but because many of the middle-aged and older professors weren't aware of them and they had stopped learning or keeping up with the currents of our times. They taught what they already knew, the same curriculum year after year.

I can't list every kind of book I read to catch up, but I can give a few samples: for Race, among many others, I read The Autobiography of Malcolm X, and Native Son, and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. I had a whole host of books already gathered for Gender, such as The Second Sex, and the Feminine Mystique, and for Religion, I read Isaac Bashevi Singer's works and other Jewish writers such as Night, by Elie Wiesel, on the Holocaust. I read books about Cesar Chavez and the Farm Worker's Movement, and books about the struggles of disabled people, and about discrimination against people due to age (the Gray Panthers). I also began to read authors on the Native American experience.

When I, a young white woman of 28, addressed my almost entirely African American class, , I asked I asked anyone who was part of a minority to raise their hands . All of them raised their hands and I raised mine and they looked at me incredulously but they were polite, thankfully. Some said, "What Minority Group are you?" and I began to talk about Gender bias and the long long struggle for women to win the Right to Vote (more than 50 years after African American Men won it. They were open minded and ready to begin. So, I listed the groups I counted as minority groups and why, and told them we would begin with Race. We started with Slavery and the Civil War, Reconstruction, Jim Crow and segregation. I had essays and short stories xerox-copied for them to read. Also, I told them I was reading Malcolm X and if anyone wanted to get the book from the library, they could read it with me.

The moral of the story is that MY eyes were opened, and my mind was opened to the vast seething layers of humanity flowing across our country and the under-represented citizens and their stories.

For that reason, I am decorating and celebrating for National Hispanic Heritage Month. I like the Day of the Dead celebration because we honor those of the past whom we have loved and lost, and so I am honoring Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta, and Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera.

Approximaely 18 percent of our population is Hispanic, our closest geographical neighbors and we know so little about them. So I begin with the literature (as with Isabel Allende) and then move on to the culture (Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera) and celebration of our diversity in this country.

Happy National Hispanic Heritage Month!

Jo Ann

wrightj45@yahoo.com