Discussion Questions for February 11

Discussion Questions: “Race, Ethnicity, and Culture,” “Printz Award Winner Speech,” American Born Chinese, and The Snowy Day

Small Group Work/Class Discussion: “Race, Ethnicity, and Culture”

1.     Hintz and Tribunella state that early representations of people of color “bolstered their creator[s’] confidence in the racial hierarchies they embraced” (346). How do visual representations do this? What about other kinds of representations (characters’ personalities, behaviors, etc.)?

2.     What is the difference between “race” and “ethnicity,” as explained by Hintz and Tribunella? Why might cultural studies scholars have differentiated between them?

3.     Hintz and Tribunella state that some works “suggest that the ‘ethnic’ child or family is really just like the unmarked ‘mainstream’ family underneath superficial cultural differences, while other works emphasize the uniqueness of identity and experience” (355). What are the advantages and drawbacks to each of these approaches?

4.     Hintz and Tribunella quote Michael Cart: “Can a writer’s imagination be powerful enough to create a viable work of fiction about a culture the writer has observed only from the outside?” (359). What do you think? Furthermore, what are the implications of believing that imagination is powerful enough to do this?

5.     Hintz and Tribunella observe that perspective greatly affects the impact of a story (364). How do the three perspectives of American Born Chinese affect its representation of race and ethnicity?

6.     To what extent do you think problematic, even racist texts, can be “reclaimed”?

Small Group Work/Class Discussion: “Printz Award Winner Speech”

1.     Yang asks himself, “By going from library to library and school to school, evangelizing librarians and teachers on the virtues of graphic novels, was I robbing comics of their cool?” (11). To what extent do you agree that this might be a concern? What does this imply about the relationship between young adults (particularly intermediate readers, grades 4-8) and adults?

2.     Yang asserts, “In a data-rich society like twenty-first-century America, we need information experts to prevent complex ideas from condensing into polarized, essentially meaningless sound bites” (12). To what extent do you agree that young readers need “information experts” to help them navigate complex texts? To what extent do you think authors have a responsibility to acknowledge the ways in which complex ideas condense into “meaningless sound bites”? Should they adjust their texts accordingly?

3.     Yang states that those who choose to work with young adults “enlisted […] in the frontlines” of the struggle to encourage media literacy and discourage snap judgments in readers. As future teachers, to what extent do you agree? What are some strategies for accomplishing this?

Small Group Work/Class Discussion: The Snowy Day

1.     What are you first impressions of The Snowy Day, in light of our discussions?

2.     Remember that this text was authored and illustrated by a Jewish American man. Does this knowledge change your interpretation of the text? Why or why not?

3.     Consider the opposing arguments about The Snowy Day on pages 374-375 of Hintz and Tribunella. Do you agree with one set more than the other? Why or why not?

4.     To what extent should the author’s intentions be taken into account when evaluating the problematic implications of a text?