Navigating the Land of Opportunities as Muslim Immigrants: A Geocriticism Perspective to Transnationalism in Multicultural Children's Literature

Children's Literature Assembly. e-mail: [email protected]; Web site: https://www.childrensliteratureassembly.org/journal.html

Y

13

Muslims; Immigrants; Teaching Methods; Childrens Literature; Cultural Pluralism; Migrants; Immigration; Social Adjustment; Self Determination; Picture Books; Self Concept; Acculturation; Friendship; Cultural Awareness; Second Language Learning; Authors; Fiction; Personal Autonomy; Islamic Culture

1521-7779

The rise in hate crimes toward immigrants across communities (Potok, 2017) has led to a focus on children's literature with immigration themes for opening up conversations in classrooms (Rodriguez & Braden, 2018). Because children's knowledge about people and the communities they live in is informed by the media, portrayals of immigrants' experiences must be accurately represented in their books. This study examines transnationalism in multicultural children's literature with significant Muslim-themed content to investigate whether depictions of Muslim migrant characters in children's narratives reflect contemporary life in the United States. By adopting a geocritical stance, it was learned that in transnationalism, spatiotemporality (or space and time) contributes to personal adjustments, social adjustments, and self-determination. In the four Muslim-themed picturebooks analyzed, the migrant child characters entered into a new space feeling displaced, often comparing current life with the spaces where they used to be. During the process of integrating into a different space, there is transgressivity or struggles in their attempts to adapt to a new place. However, given time, the new space creates opportunities for friendship, cultural understanding, language learning, and agency. Although the transgressive spaces are fictional, the stories are told from the real-life experiences of migrant authors.

ERIC

2021

EJ1312701