The Trouble With Reader-response Theory in Reading Multicultural Literature: A Critique of Dana Fox’s and Kathy Short's Stories Matter

Authors

  • Jacquelyn Chappel University of Hawaii at Manoa

Keywords:

multicultural literature, reader-response theory, Stories Matter, Kathy Short, Dana Fox, cultural studies, world literature, cross-cultural literature, parallel cultures, transnational literature.

Abstract

This book review of Kathy Short’s and Dana Fox’s collection of essays on multicultural literature (Stories Matter, 2003) offers a summary  of the views expressed and finds that authors in the debate over what counts as multicultural literature take up either a reader-response approach or cultural studies approach to reading literature. Edited by two of the major figures on multicultural literature in education today, Stories Matter raises a number of important disagreements and confusions over definitions of multicultural children’s literature that continue to be debated over today. The book review offers a useful summary and provides a framework for making sense of the many voices in this debate.

Author Biography

Jacquelyn Chappel, University of Hawaii at Manoa

Jacquelyn Chappel serves as a Lecturer in the English Department at the University of Hawaii at Manoa and is currently working toward her PhD in Education Curriculum Studies in the College of Education there. She taught world litearture in secondary education for seven years and her dissertation hopes to offer strategies to broach some of the problems associated wtih teaching world literature.

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Published

2017-03-06