Base Paper Teaching Multicultural Literature at the High School Level For many English teachers, researchers, and teacher educators, multicultural literature instruction remains a controversial consideration. Issues of definition, appropriateness, quality, etc. make up only part of the controversy.
Inclusion is the driving force of multicultural literary instruction.
Decades ago teachers, writers, scholars, and activists called for a more inclusive literary experience for students. Resistance to multicultural literature generally came as an assertion that literature written by people of color was not of the same quality as the traditional canon. While teachers, textbooks, and even large scale testing companies have come to include literature by people of color as a response to the past challenges, efforts to prevent multicultural literature from being included in these areas has increased proportionately. Teachers must be ever vigilant about why and how to include multicultural literature in their classroom. With the increase in literature by people of color in high school classrooms, teachers need to begin to think deeply about how to maintain the cultural integrity of the literature while introducing it to diverse groups of students.