Final Reflection

Today I was reflecting on our class and my growth and understanding of so many more cultures than my own now. As I was reflecting I realized that in particular a few of the texts really sparked an interest in me to find out more about their lives, culturally or religiously. I was specifically moved by “Boy Meets Boy,” “Becoming Naomi Leon,” and the Jewish culture. I feel as though being exposed to these texts helped me to better my view of these people, by seeing similarities and differences. I also feel that the books and our discussions gave me a better understanding of criteria to use when assessing if a book is a quality piece of literature, as well as an accurate depiction of the culture.

“Becoming Naomi Leon” was a very nice text. I had read a piece by this author before and found it to be extremely moving. This book was particularly interesting to me, especially when the family was in Mexico. I found myself very interested in the customs that the family became familiar with. I also really enjoyed that the book contained a unique family, meaning with a grandmother and her grandchildren. I like to see texts that don’t always portray the ideal “American family” or a mother and father and their children all happy and together.

I did happen to like our example of Jewish literature, “Confessions of a Closet Catholic” however I thought that one of the books from my book set, for my final project would be a better example of Judaism, the Jewish culture, and values. My book was about a girl that finds out her mother was Jewish, making her Jewish, even though she has grown up Christian. I feel that it would be better for the students of 448 to read a text that is about a girl finding her heritage and desiring to be Jewish right away rather than a book about a girl that finally accepts her Jewish heritage.

“Boy Meets Boy” was the book I enjoyed the most, which is interesting because I expected to relate to it the least. Truly I related to it the most, I felt as though the story was a very relatable high school romantic relationship that was simple and passionate. I has previously read GLBTQ texts like “And Tango Makes Three” but never any books that directly addressed a relationship, I was pleasantly surprised that I enjoyed the book so much. I say that only because I grew up in a very conservative Christian home and did not open myself up to accepting GLBTQ people until high school. I want to be an open teacher so I am working to include all people in my classroom library because I am hoping that my students will be very worldly.

In summary, I feel that this class has really helped me become more interested in searching for the best diverse literature instead of brining in any book that may portray a different culture. As we have seen in this class not all books that can be considered diverse should be considered quality literature. I am much more confident that I can assess books in hopes to incorporate quality diverse literature into my classroom!