Massachusetts School Library Association
            MEMBER PORTAL                
​Join or Renew     Member Directory​
  • Home
  • About Us
    • MSLA Leadership 2022-23
    • Executive Board Meetings
    • Joint Statements: MLA, MassCUE
    • Spotlight Archive
    • Strategic Plan 2016-22
    • MSLA Constitution
  • Membership
    • Member Portal
    • Join or Renew Your Membership
    • Members Map
    • Email List
    • Regions >
      • Boston
      • Northeast
      • Metrowest
      • Southeast
      • Central
      • West
  • Conference
    • MSLA and PDPs
  • Resources
    • DESE Rubric
    • Certification & Licensure
    • Program Standards & Rubrics
    • Job Description: School Librarian
    • Job Listings
    • MLS Strategic Planning
    • Intellectual Freedom
  • Advocacy
    • MA School Library Study for Equity & Access
    • Everyday Advocacy
    • ESSA
    • Exemplary Programs
  • Newsletter
    • 2022 MSLA Forum Issues >
      • February 2022
      • May 2022
      • October 2022
    • 2021 MSLA Forum Issues >
      • February 2021
      • May 2021
      • October 2021
    • 2020 MSLA Forum Issues >
      • February 2020
      • May 2020
      • October 2020
    • 2019 MSLA Forum Issues >
      • February 2019
      • May 2019
      • October 2019
    • 2018 MSLA Forum Issues >
      • February 2018
      • May 2018
      • October 2018
    • 2017 MSLA Forum Issues >
      • February 2017
      • May 2017
      • September 2017
      • October 2017
    • 2016 MSLA Forum Issues >
      • February 2016
      • May 2016
      • October 2016
    • 2015 MSLA Forum Issues >
      • April 2015
      • November 2015
    • MSLA Forum 2002-2013
  • Awards
    • Judi Paradis Memorial Grant
    • Archive: History of Awards
    • 2019 Awards Pictures
    • 2018 Awards Pictures
    • 2017 Awards Pictures
    • 2016 Awards Pictures
    • 2015 Awards Pictures
  • Bookmark Contest
    • 2022 Winners
    • 2020 Winners
    • 2019 and 2018 Winners
    • 2016 and 2017 Winners
    • 2012 to 2015 Winners
    • 2009 to 2011 Winners
    • 2004 to 2008 Winners
    • Bookmark Judges

COMICS CORNER COLUMN

4/12/2015

0 Comments

 
Last issue I wrote about working with students on reading political cartoons as primary sources, but you may have noticed that both of the political cartoons I chose were recent ones, drawn in the last few years and focused on issues that current students would recognize. I chose them because they’d be “easy,” which is to say, enough students would get them quickly enough that we could focus on the mechanics of reading and interpreting work in a medium (comics/cartoons) that most students have never studied.

That’s kind of a stretch for talking about primary sources, though, isn’t it? Usually when we talk about primary and secondary sources we’re learning (or teaching) about history, some event or time period from long ago. I can ask my students to think about what people in the future might learn from our contemporary comics — how, for those future people, they could be primary sources — but that’s a pretty big imaginative leap, especially considering how much we take our own time and culture for granted.

That’s where the second lesson in this mini unit comes in: we start off once again with a modern comic, Gene Luen Yang’s American Born Chinese, but then we use it to help us consider a primary source political cartoon from the era of World War II and the internment camps for Japanese Americans. And while the first lesson had two key points, this lesson really boils down to one: how we draw (or otherwise represent) people matters.

We start by reading through several pages from American Born Chinese as a class: I project them on the board, one spread at a time, and ask the students what they notice. For some pages I’ll specifically ask them what’s different from the previous spread we looked at, or focus on some aspect of how Yang conveys information (for example, putting brackets around dialogue that characters would actually be saying in Chinese). The main thing I want them to notice, though, is how the characters are drawn. I’m going to quote a couple of pages so you can see what I mean.


(Yang 26)

I start with this page because I want students to see how different these characters look from each other. In each panel we have four boys, all Chinese American and all about the same age, and they are easy to tell apart. They have different faces, different hairstyles, different outfits — they are drawn as four distinct individuals.

After we’ve read through several more spreads, though, I show them part of another storyline in the book, including this page:




(Yang 48)

For those of you who haven’t read American Born Chinese yet, this is Chin-Kee, an embarrassing, larger-than-life racist caricature who is meant to make readers as uncomfortable as he makes his cousin Danny. Unlike the boys in the first image I quoted, who are drawn with tan skin, Chin-Kee’s skin is distinctly yellow. His eyes are squinted shut. He has huge front teeth. More than one student has suggested he looks like a chipmunk. He speaks with a stereotyped rather than a realistic accent. And of course, his name is a variation on a racial slur.

Because students have already seen other Asian characters (both Chinese American and Japanese American) from the same comic, they know that Chin-Kee does not need to be drawn this way. We discuss the fact that he’s an exaggeration, a caricature: not only is he literally larger than other characters, but of the three storylines that come together at the end of the book, this is the only one presented as a sitcom, complete with laugh track and applause written across the bottoms of the panels. Unlike the caricature of the young woman in our first lesson, though, this caricature is hurtful.

Then I show students the following political cartoon:




(Seuss)

One of the first things I tell students about this political cartoon is that it’s from 1942, and one of the first questions I ask them is: who do these people look like? Do they look like Jin and his friends in the first page I quoted above? Or do they look like Chin-Kee? From there we can also discuss setting (west coast of the United States), what the characters are doing (handing out/receiving explosives), and what they think the caption at the top means, particularly the implication that these caricatured Asian Americans do not consider the United States their home.

After that the conversation depends in part on how much students already know about Japanese American internment during World War II, though often I’ll have at least one or two students who can offer an initial overview. Mostly I try to help students make the connection between how Dr. Seuss chose to represent a group of people (Japanese Americans) and how our country collectively chose to treat that same group of people, and to think about how this political cartoon can help us understand the social atmosphere that would lead people to believe that the internment camps were a good idea.

There’s one other reason I like to use this particular political cartoon, and that’s the artist. Often I don’t even have to bring this up because a student will notice it first, but this was drawn by the beloved Dr. Seuss. I find it heartening how disappointed students are when they realize this, but I think it’s a great opportunity to discuss the fact that even people we admire and who make good points in some situations can be wrong in other situations.

Works Cited

Dr. Seuss. “Waiting for the Signal From Home . . .” Cartoon. Paperless Archives. BAC Marketing, n.d. Web. 4 April 2015. <http://www.paperlessarchives.com/wwii_dr_seuss_cartoons.html>.

Yang, Gene Luen. American Born Chinese. New York: First Second, 2006. Print.

Emily Tersoff is the librarian at the Norwell Middle School

0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    Forum Newsletter

    Co-Editors
    Reba Tierney and
    ​Luke Steere

    Reba is the School Librarian at Waltham High School; Luke is School Librarian at  Wilson Middle in Natick

    Click to set custom HTML

    Categories

    All
    AASL
    Academic
    Advocacy
    ALA
    Authors
    Book Trailers
    Censorship
    Column
    Conference
    Culture
    Databases
    Dewey
    Digital Citizenship
    E Books
    E-books
    Elementary
    ESSA
    Ethics
    Evaluation
    Inquiry
    Leadership
    Learning Commons
    Legislation
    Literacy
    Maker Space
    Nonfiction
    Orientation
    Planning
    PLN
    President's Remarks
    Professional Development
    Reading
    Science
    Secondary
    Standards
    Technology
    Union
    Volunteers
    Weeding

    Archives

    October 2022
    May 2022
    February 2022
    October 2021
    May 2021
    February 2021
    October 2020
    May 2020
    February 2020
    October 2019
    May 2019
    February 2019
    October 2018
    May 2018
    February 2018
    October 2017
    September 2017
    May 2017
    February 2017
    October 2016
    May 2016
    February 2016
    November 2015
    April 2015

    MSLA Forum Past Issues:
    January 2015
    April 2015
    ​
    2002-2015 MSLA Forum
The Massachusetts School Library Association  works to ensure every school has a school library program that is fully integrated at all grade levels across the curriculum and has a significant and measurable impact on student achievement….Read more…..and Learn more about MSLA

Contact MSLA:
Emily Kristofek, Office Manager/Event Planner
P.O. Box 336. Wayland, MA 01778
ekristofek@maschoolibraries.org
​
508-276-1697 

Massachusetts School Library Association. All Rights Reserved.  Copyright 2023.