About Me and Intro to Multicultural Literature.

Hi there. :) Thank you for taking the time to read my blog entries for Multicultural Literature! My name is Charisma Carter-Graham. I am a twenty-year-old, incoming senior at Grand Canyon University in Phoenix, AZ. I am pursuing a degree in Secondary Education with an emphasis in English. I am the youngest of four children, but my mom raised seven children altogether, including some of my siblings’ childhood friends. I was born with cerebral palsy. This limited my movement and balance substantially in some things, because of this literature had profound influence on me and my childhood. It allowed me to imagine in depth what skiing would like, or what it would be like to be a world-class spy. I love literature and the effect that words can have on the human heart. Literature, if done well, can bring a person to tears, make them laugh, make them feel sorrow and even make the reader feel heartbreak or love. This blog was created for ENG-355: Intro to Multicultural Literature. Multicultural literature is basically what it sounds like: a compilation of works from multiple cultures. It is works that share thoughts and values from different cultures. It encompasses the traditions and tales from many, many places, people and cultural backgrounds. Sometimes the values and thoughts of one culture can be same as or relatable to another culture. The blurring of national boundaries occurs when literature shows an integration of multiple cultures in a work. It sometimes causes it to be hard to distinguish between the boundaries of the national influences when this happens. The beauty of this is that it can be noticed in some 20th century literature very well. I think that this is because the 20th century was the time when people were traveling further and exploring who they were and where they came from, in a deeper way. The term "global" when referring to literature (global literature) is interesting. The way I see it global literature is the literature that many people from around the world can relate to, understand, and enjoy on a deep level. Global literature, to me, is the most interesting and can be the most beautiful of literature because it is something that shows universal connectedness and a shared concern or interest in certain issues. Global literature shows the reader that no matter how far away or “different” people are from each other, we are the same where it counts: we are all human and all yearn for love, connection, happiness and we all have concerns and fears.
The posts contained in this blog are all about various works of multicultural literature. Each of these posts offer individual insight for teachers on different works. It suggests ways to teach the literature to high school students and also how to bring a real world popular culture application to the lesson. The blogs cover topics such as Native American literature, Japanese and Chinese literature, African and African American literature, 20th Century literature, among others. Each of the works offer something unique and beautiful about either one culture or multiple.

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