Insider or Outsider

While reading articles based on the topic of being an insider or outsider when writing literature, I kept coming back to a discussion we had in class about generalizations and stereotypes and how they are closely related. These thoughts, lead me to the thinking that when educating a classroom with diverse children's literature that it is best to have an insider of that group write it. The reasons for this are several.


- If a writer is an insider, they know personally how that group feels on a topic and will be able to depict the actual emotions and feelings toward the debate.


- The insider can also give the reader a sense of mental imagery, so the reader can visualize what is going on.



At the same time, it is hard to say that I would pick only literature that is from an insider because having a diversified collection of both insider and outsider works would break down the stereotypes and give more generalizations on a topic. Just because a person is an insider does not mean that they know everything that is going on in the culture. They could have a total opposite view and give the wrong depiction. An outsider can easily do years of research and write a factual book that would actually give truth to a group.



These topic of being an insider or outsider and writing multicultural literature is a tricky one because of these reasons. If I had to make a choice on what to include in my future classroom, I would include both types of writers because having books from both sources that have common truth emphasizes the point even more. Where if you have contradicting points, it would led to research and projects for the students to do.