Diversity in The English Curriculum

A few weeks ago, I stumbled upon a video about the controversial Lychee and Dog Meat Festival in Yulin, China, a ten-day event where thousands of dogs and cats are consumed. Many people were down in the comments debating about the ethics of eating dogs compared to domesticated livestock, or whether or not westernized countries should be reforming their own slaughterhouses rather than criticizing the meat trade of China. I could discuss the controversy of the festival for hours. Maybe someday I will even write an article about it. But today is not the day. Today, I am going to talk about some of the comments that I saw in these videos. 

Depending on your opinion of dog eating, many of the comments from the videos were justifiably angry and disgusted, such as these: 

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“This makes me sick! These people should be ashamed of themselves!”

“I am no forever crying I hope my dog never has to experience this or any other 

dog it’s so cruel.”

    

But then there were other comments, such as these:

 

“I won’t be surprised if they started to eat human.”

“I don’t care about the people who got Corona virus in China after the killing of 

this dog festival.”

“Honestly, i think china is the worst country EVER.”

“Absolutely disgusting race… they have absolutely zero hygiene.”

“Chinese are heartless.”

“They are the dirtiest people on the earth.”

“So that’s why they look so weird.”

 

I understand that these commenters are confused and furious. I also understand that some of these commenters are kids who are trying to joke around because this seems to be a topic that everyone is passionate about and is, therefore, exploitable for a bit of humor. So, I felt like I could not hold these commenters to such a high standard as I would want to.

 

But as the COVID-19 pandemic spread, I saw videos of people harassing Asian Americans on subways. Some kids yelled, “Do you like spring rolls?” repeatedly at my mom and me while we were walking, which, although harmless, definitely didn’t help boost my morale. And then I remembered these comments on the Lychee and Dog Meat Festival, where hundreds and thousands of viewers jeered at a country of 1.5 billion people for the acts of one city. I realized that these commenters did not have China’s best interests in mind; they were demeaning and generalizing an entire country. In a time of isolation, I felt even more alone, and I am sure many other Asian Americans felt the same.

 

I am not here to condone or condemn this festival or the people who commented on the videos; rather, I am here to talk about how many times we are quick to judge and label the unknown and how we can help stop it.

Even though I grew up reading a large range of books, I didn’t start to consider the importance of diversity in stories until fairly recently. Some of my earliest memories were of me reading “Magic Tree House” on my bedroom carpet. My love for stories only grew in middle school as I read books about fantasy, romance, and dystopias. The world of imagination was boundless. However, like many minorities, I did not have any ‘role models’ to look up to, nor were there many prominent Asian figures in pop culture; I was nicknamed Mulan in preschool since that was the only famous person anyone could associate with me, and I did not read an American book with an Asian lead character until fifth grade. It was not until I started middle school and high school at Collegiate where my need for a role model became apparent.

 

Something not a lot of people fully understand is that, many times, second-generation immigrants live a dual life. The customs of my Chinese church and household are very different from those at Collegiate. There are small differences, like how people dress or the fact that I had no idea how to use butter until I visited my Collegiate friend’s house. Then there are bigger differences, like how I act around my Collegiate and church friends. Living between Chinese and American culture is strange, and often frightening; what happens if I assimilate and lose my touch with my heritage?

 

I do not think I really recognized my own struggle with my identity until, in junior year, I read Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng, a book that follows a half white-half Chinese family in the 1970s coping with their past. Ng reflects on nativism, sexism, and harmful family dynamics. It’s a beautifully crafted narrative about a family that deals with abandonment, broken dreams, and the consequences of silence. 

    Most importantly, this was the first time that, in my extensive reading career, I had related to a character so closely. Suddenly I had this connection that I’d never felt before. I realized how important it was to me to read this book and that many other people are deprived of this connection. After reading Celeste Ng’s novel, I began to see the value of diversity in books, the value of my own story, and the story of others. And, more recently, I began to wonder if the people who commented on the Lychee and Dog Meat Festival would have still said the things they said if they had read books like Everything I Never Told You.

 

To rephrase the words of novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, the danger of being in a bubble is that we are trapped in one story. We start to believe that there is one right way to live, the one where people are this or that, the one where people are more liberal or conservative, the one where people like Marvel more or DC more. The one-story spreads ignorance and pity in the face of different stories: Chinese people eat everything that walks in front of them. Africans, no matter their nationality, are poor and are in dire need of TOMS Shoes. These are misleading and often dangerous mindsets that divide, even in times like now when we need to come together more than ever.

 

Ignorance ends here, with the education system. Because many high schoolers do not read outside of school, the most important books in our lives are the ones assigned to us. Why not take that advantage to use reading as a tool to explore the melting pot of America? If we do not, we are failing the already impressionable teenagers who live in their one story, who do not understand the struggles of a minority and do not know how to empathize with people of different backgrounds. 

 

If the English department’s goal, especially in ninth and tenth grade classes, is to examine the themes of American Classics and teach us how to write analytical papers, then the current selection of books is satisfying this goal and there is nothing else to discuss. However, if Collegiate is willing to expand the diversity in the English curriculum, we need to realize the potential of this change. When students begin to read about their own stories, they will grow up feeling understood instead of isolated. When students read about the stories of others, they will grow up knowing the importance of perspective. The bubble will be broken, opening our community to the cultures and backgrounds of different people. Increasing diversity is not about ticking off every country and ethnicity from a list; one book can reach out to so many people with a shared experience, and it creates bridges built on empathy across different worlds.

 

As a junior in high school, I do not believe I have the ability to call for a complete change in Collegiate’s English curriculum, nor do I think that the English department has been oblivious to this topic; the changes that Collegiate has made every year is a sign that diversity has become a more relevant issue than ever. I also don’t believe that diversity in books will eliminate prejudice and ignorance, but I do think that it will help change our mindsets. We will start to realize how vast and beautiful diversity is in society. We will start to overlook the stereotypes and see the individual. We will raise up our generation to be less susceptible to the traps of the one-story. Books are only the beginning. But it is the beginning of something extraordinary.