While reading Yamate's article, "Asian Pacific American Children's Literature: Expanding Perceptions About Who We Are," I found similar themes to other readings we have had in class. Yamate discusses how there are so few children's books about Asian Pacific literature, and the ones that are there, give an "artificial view" of the world they live in. She further mentions how the literature that is present depicts Pacific Asian Americans within a past context. This, however, does not adequately represent their culture; it instead it perpetuates stereotypes about their culture.
The same problem seemed to hold true while learning and reading about the representation of Native American's in children's literature. Children viewed Native Americans as "people of the past," no long present or seen in today's society. This seems to be consistent with the literature about Native Americans. Native Americans seems to be most included in historical fiction. Similar to the situation with Asian Pacific Americans, stereotypes of this group seem to therefore perpetuate in literature as well.
While reading articles about disability in children's literature, there was a quote about the perpetuation of stereotypes in literature. In Eve Tal's article, "Swimming in the Mainstream" she states, "How can stereotypes be avoided? Information about the disability needs to be accurate and up-to-date, and the language describing the disability chosen with sensitivity and awareness of current usage." I feel this quote holds true for Pacific Asian Americans and Native Americans as well. Literature representing these two groups of people must be current and up-to-date! It is important that such ethnicities are represented in contemporary realistic fiction literature, not solely historical fiction, and are done so in an accurate way.
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I agree with Erin's post about the problem being similiar to that with Native American Literature. I know that many times people tend to look over Asian Pacific Literature because it it not something that is commonally thought of. I feel that there are stereotypes within any type of literature no matter what it deals with because some people just don't know. That is one of the things that I talked about in my paper because I felt that Jules did not want to be in her Korean stereotype. So, she tried to break away from that as much as she good throughout the book. I will admit that before this class, I never really thought about Asian Pacific American literature because it was never a topic I thought about for my classroom. Not that I am against but it is definitely a group that is overlooked.
Erin F, I would say that I am in the same boat with you when you said you never really thought about Asian Pacific American literature because before reading Project Mulberry, I hadn't thought about it either. If I were to hear "Asian Pacific American literature" I would probably have stereotypes immediately come to my mind, or as Erin R. mentioned, perhaps only view it as a historical fiction piece. Instead of embracing their American citizenship, it is often believed that Asian Americans long for their "Asian" heritage instead. The opposite of this assumption can be seen in Project Mulberry with Julia wanting to embrace the American side of her Korean-American "hyphen" and ignore the Korean side. However removed Asian Americans are from their ancestors' homeland, it appears that they will forever be connected to that side of their heritage, even if only because of their looks. Margaret Cho is a good example of this. She deals with weight issues just like the typical American female and even dated Quentin Tarantino, but due to the way she looks it is assumed that she should instead eat fish and rice and wear chopsticks in her hair. Its just a strange phenomenon, and one I have never thought of before, how some ethnicities will always have that "hyphen" (Asian-American, African-American, Hispanic-American) based on their looks, which bonds them to a past that they may not even know about. That bond sets them up to constantly have to deal with stereotypes and discrimination. However, I personally don't carry around a Swedish-American or German-American label because I look plain jane "American". Project Mulberry and Margaret Cho's stand up comedy really brought that to my attention.
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