Multi-Cultural Female Protagonists

Multi-Cultural Female Protagonists

Why the search for female heroines? Kelly (1992) sums up the rationale in the first paragraph of her chapter "Gender Issues and the Young Adult Novel" in the same text mentioned above:

If we believe that literature can make us rethink or resee or reevaluate our ideas about others and ourselves, then the portrayal of male and female roles in adolescent fiction is an important classroom consideration. If adolescent literature provides an environment for young adults to see the results of decisions made by characters, and to evaluate their ideas and behaviors, then how males and females interact in those fictional situations can shape thinking by reinforcing stereotypes or by promoting alternative views. (p. 154)

Kelly reiterates that, in quality novels featuring female protagonists, one issue that is often not addressed in those that feature boys as heroes is that of girls' acceptance of their bodies' changes and growth patterns. Elements held in common with novels featuring both genders include themes of relationships with those of the same sex and of the opposite sex and with parents. Complicating these considerations is the sensitive role women, both young and adult, assume in differing ethnographic settings -- religious, cultural, racial, etc. When this dynamic begins to affect the development of identity, the adolescent female with a minority background should be able to find role models and affirmation in young adult literature while others should be able to understand the uniqueness of her situation.

Novels from the 1970s and 1980s

Indeed, novels like those of Mildred Taylor featuring Cassie Logan certainly retain validity for the classroom because the classics Let the Circle Be Unbroken (1981) and Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry (1976) can still move and challenge young people. Not all of Taylor's works dealing with life in southern Mississippi during and after the Depression feature Cassie, but more recently The Road to Memphis (1990) does follow the gutsy protagonist as she continues as a high-school student. Following her history from the African-American perspective, students in a still racially unstable society can find help in forming opinions about the origins of much of this tension. Joyce Carol Thomas's earlier works Marked by Fire (1982) and Water Girl (1986) trace the stories of Abby and Amber respectively as they struggle to find themselves as young black women. Others who have dealt with the plight of the African-American female include Alice Childress in A Short Walk (1981) and Rainbow Jordan (1982). Virginia Hamilton presents adolescent black heroines when she writes the stories of Teresa in Sweet Whispers, Brother Rush (1982), Sheema in A Little Love (1984), and Talley in A White Romance (1987). Walter Dean Myers presents the story of Didi and her brother Tony growing up in Harlem in his classic novel Motown and Didi: A Love Story (1984). These novels, cited above, although published in the 1970s and 1980s, are still worthy of study and/or inclusion in classroom libraries for the Black American perspective on being young and female in America.

The tradition of the young adult heroine who comes from the Caribbean area has been explored by Rosa Guy in the life of Desiree Die-Donne in the Antilles in My Love, My Love or The Peasant Girl (1985) while Scott O'Dell's historical novel of the West Indies Slave Rebellion of 1733 traces the story of Raisha in My Name Is Not Angelica (1989). African writers deal with black heroines from their cultural perspective as Buchi Emecheta has Ngbeke narrate her own coming-of-age story in Nigeria, The Moonlight Bride (1983), and Beverly Naidoo tells Niledi's story centered in the terrorism of apartheid in Chain of Fire (1990).

Asian-American heroines appear in Linda Crew's novel Children of the River (1989), the story of Sunder who has escaped the Khmer Rouge to deal with the conflicts between two cultures as does Kim Andrews when she journeys to one of the Japanese-American concentration camps of World War II in Kim/Kimi (1987) by Hadley Irwin. Other novels featuring Japanese bi-cultural struggles for young adolescent girls include The War Between the Classes (1985) in which Gloria D. Miklowitz writes of Emiko (Amy) Sumoto's experiences in a class experiment with status, and A Jar of Dreams (1981) in which Yoshiko Uchida tells the story of Rinko growing up in the Depression in California. The Chinese-American struggle for identity in girls is exemplified in a historical novel based on the journey of Sun Yat Sen from China to Canada in 1909 to find followers like Lillian Ho's father in The Curses of Third Uncle (1986) by Paul Yee. Two novels often studied at the high school level are by Amy Tan: The Joy Luck Club (1989), which traces four Chinese families from pre-1949 China through 20th-century America as grandmothers, mothers, and American-born daughters of those families struggle for understanding and identity; and The Kitchen God's Wife (1991), which provides an extended reading for those fascinated by the dilemma of the Chinese-American female.

Several recent novels focusing on the Asian experience for young girls growing up in differing cultures examined from the viewpoints of natives of that culture are presented in the contemporary bibliography at the end of this chapter. Included is the sequel to a standard novel often taught in world literature classes. In Shabanu: Daughter of the Wind (1989), Suzanne Staples begins the saga of the 11-year-old daughter of a Pakistani nomadic family and her eventual acceptance of an arranged marriage as part of her cultural heritage.

The Hispanic female adolescent experience is chronicled in the classic novel by Sandra Cisneros in The House on Mango Street (1989), where Esperanza, her narrator, tells readers of her neighbors, her low socio-economic background, and her dreams for "a house all [her] own." In other earlier works, the Latino heroine Kata leaves Mexico in Irene Beltran Hernandez's Across the Great River (1989), and Luisa deals with a bi-cultural relationship in Claudia Mills' Luisa's American Dream (1981).

Another aspect of the young female protagonist's quest for identity appears in Native-American literature. Of particular worth for study is A Yellow Raft in Blue Water (1987) by Michael Dorris where Rayona as part Native American and part African American must make peace with herself as she flees a Montana reservation in her quest. In Jean Craighead George's The Talking Earth (1983), Billie Wind, a young Seminole girl, leaves school at the Kennedy Space Center for the Florida Everglades in a similar journey. Jamake Highwater's Ghost Horse trilogy begins with Legend Days (1984) with Amana's story as an 11-year-old survivor of a small pox epidemic who is forced to marry an elder in the tribe. Her sorrows and rebellion against the constraints of womanhood are chronicled here. Scott O'Dell also deals with these conflicts in several young adult novels published prior to 1990, including Streams to the River, River to the Sea: A Novel of Sacagawea (1986), Island of the Blue Dolphins (a 1960 Newbery Award winner), and Black Star, Bright Dawn (1988). In these historical works, he writes of the young Shoshone girl who accompanies Lewis and Clark, of Karana who survives alone on an island off the Pacific Coast for several years, and of Bright Dawn who enters the Iditarod dog sled race in Alaska.

The emergence of maturity and identity in novels with Jewish American heroines is also the basis for several novels for adolescents. Although many of these are based in Nazi Germany and use the Holocaust as the theme, others are more contemporary. Sandy Asher writes of Ruthie Morgenthau's decision to have a bas mitzvah while coming to terms with her father's death in Daughters of the Law (1980). Susan Beth Pfeffer uses the same ritualistic ceremony as the basis for Becky Weiss's conflict in Turning Thirteen (1988). In The Night Journey (1981), Kathryn Lasky's heroine Rachel learns of her grandmother's life during the pogroms of Tsarist Russia, thus gaining insight into her faith. Chaim Potok gives his heroine in Davita's Harp (1986) a similar dilemma when her non-believing parents, one Jewish and one Christian, are caught in the chaos of World War II. Much of the Holocaust literature lends itself to a moving thematic unit on that topic. Of special note is Number the Stars (1989) by Lois Lowry, the story of the friendship between Annemarie Johansen, a Christian, and Ellen Rosen, a Jew, in Nazi-occupied Copenhagen. Ellen pretends to be Annemarie's sister as the Rosen family is smuggled to safety in Sweden. Another Newbery winner, this book represents the true triumph of the human spirit. A switch on this theme has Hannah, living in the United States in 1988, suddenly transported in time to become Chaya in a concentration camp in 1942 Poland; this tour de force is The Devil's Arithmetic (1988) by Jane Yolen.

That contemporary texts successfully deal with this complexity is apparent in a number of novels published in the early to mid-nineties, including the following:

Asher, S. Daughters of the Law. Beaufort Books, 1980.

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