I mean, it seems insulting to ME that most of what you read in US Lit is comprised of white, male authors when in US Lit that is NOT the case...

A majority, maybe, but nowhere near the vast majority taught.

That's arguably the single greatest strength the American Canon has going for it vs. other Canons, including (one I do honestly like more) the British Canon of Literature...

British Lit, for as much as I LOVE IT, *IS* mainly white, with some differences as to religious and political affiliations, and it's not until a couple centuries ago that most (KEYWORD MOST) of the female authors one would study in Brit Lit (ie, Austen, Charlotte Smith and the Brontes) pop up...it's not until later still that some "color" (as it were) enters the mix...

But the American Canon is far more diverse, especially in the last half, say, about the last 150 years or so.

You have Whites AND Blacks of note writing, Men and Women, and then several noted Latino, Jewish, and Asian-American (if we included LGBT authors as a group separate from just "White" we'd have another huge literary group) authors writing as well, very few of which are brought up, and are instead shunted off into a Minority Lit program.

That seems to be a disservice, to your children (who can be so shaped by what they learn and who they read) and to those authors and communities as a whole.



Am I far off here? I dunno, it just seems a better thing to make it 3 classes rather than 2 or whatever else and diversify the Canon (which is NOT to say that people are to be studied "because" they are a minority...rather I'm arguing that literary and cultural merit should be, largely, color-blind--Langston Hughes and Toni Morrison have as much right in your child's class as Edgar Allen Poe and Mark Twain, and I KNOW your kids and you as well have read them...so let's not get rid of Poe and Twain, but rather make room for Morrison and Hughes and Philip Roth and Richard Rodriguez and Amy Tan and all the others to stand alongside them with as much recognition as they deserve. America is NOT the Home of the Men and Land of the Whites...if that was once the case, it's not anymore--it's hugely diversified, and the literature it chooses to promote and teach should reflect that, and not shunt authors off into specialty/minority classes few students will ever take jsut because of the color of someone's skin.)