Cultural Background and Storytelling: A Review and ...

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ning novelists like Gabriel Garcia-Marquez. (1967/1970) exhibit stylistic features similar to those in the stories of the children above. Narrative Structure in Other ...
Cultural Background and Storytelling: A Review and Implications for Schooling Allyssa McCabe University of Massachusetts Lowell

The Elementary School Journal Volume 97, Number 5 © 1997 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 0013-5984/97/9705-0001$02.00 Portions of this article have appeared in Chameleon Readers by Allyssa McCabe, © 1995 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, and are used by permission of the publisher.

Abstract In this article I synthesize research on the importance of stories in classrooms, on storytelling form and how it differs from culture to culture, and on some implications of these different traditions of storytelling. I draw on qualitative and quantitative research. I conclude by proposing some ideas teachers might consider as they plan instruction on world literature and by offering directions for future research. Resistance to implementing a curriculum that includes substantial multicultural literature often takes the form of concern for the quality of literature to be included. For example, according to the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (1993, p. 4), "Including diverse voices can conflict with teaching top-quality literature. . . . If you teach a work from every g r o u p at every grade level, you'll teach some bad literature." The problem with this argument is that current formal definitions of what makes a good story are based on the European storytelling tradition, as I discuss later. This exclusive formal reliance on the European tradition is exacerbated by the fact that 86.5% of teachers are white nonHispanics according to 1993 figures compiled by the National Center for Education Statistics, and such teachers bring informal notions about w h a t makes a good story from their own European tradition. The topic of cultural differences in preferred narrative forms has generated considerable scholarly interest. Sometimes the issue of cultural differences in storytelling has been discussed in terms of a contrast between an oral tradition and a literate one (see Bernstein, 1974; see Hemphill, 1989, for

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a review). Such discussion implies that chaels, 1991), and stories are often an early "literate-style" language and story form al- writing form (Calkins, 1986; Graves, 1983; lows a smoother transition to literacy than Sulzby, 1985). Stories are also a timedoes so-called oral-style language and story honored but recently neglected means of form (e.g., Michaels & Collins, 1984). Others implementing moral education programs (e.g., Heath, 1982; Snow, 1983) have taken (Vitz, 1990). Recent work in philosophy and issue with this use of "literate-style" to refer cognitive psychology highlights the importo any form of oral language, arguing that tance of narrative in developing arguments such usage blurs the meaning of the terms. (Bruner, 1990; Maclntyre, 1981) and in In this article I follow Snow (1983, p. 166) thinking in general (Dennett, 1991). Oral in defining oral language as "all oral forms history projects (e.g., the Foxfire series, of communication, speaking and listening," Wigginton, 1976,1977) have shown that one which contrasts to "the activities and skills of the most effective ways of teaching hisassociated directly with the use of print— tory to children is by using familiar adults' primarily reading and writing," because, narratives. historically, literacy itself began with writing (Ong, 1982). I assume that all children Similarities and Differences among bring an oral storytelling form to school Storytelling Traditions with them and draw on this in their en- In drawing attention to different traditions counters with written stories. I also assume of storytelling, as I intend to do here, simithat any kind of oral language can be made larities among the traditions are also ineviliterate by the act of writing it down, and I tably implied (Burbules & Rice, 1991). In argue that (1) the smoothness of the transi- fact, real similarities among storytelling tion of linguistically different children from traditions are more easily identified when oral language use in preschool years to the one acknowledges, discusses, and underacquisition of reading and writing may be stands differences than when one simply enhanced if educators and researchers ex- asserts commonalities without careful examination. In the end, one cannot help but pand the definition of what constitutes simultaneously see differences and similargood stories, (2) all children's oral storytellities between storytelling traditions in varing traditions can and should be matched ious cultures. A consideration of cultural by at least some printed stories at school, differences in fictional stories or factual narand (3) understanding the literature of any ratives from various cultures in this article culture different from one's own is greatly will show that narratives from all children facilitated by understanding the oral distend to involve sense-making and selfcourse style that participants in that culture presentation around events that have hapvalue; without such background knowl- pened to them in the past. That is, when edge, a reader is likely to be severely con- children make sense of their experience strained in comprehension. through narrating it (Hymes, 1982), one comes to understand them by means of the roles they select to portray themselves, their Importance of Stories in Classrooms Stories have always been important in class- family, and their friends as having played rooms and are likely to become even more in those experiences. At the same time, so. Recently, there has been increased focus however, my analysis also indicates some on the importance of stories in education, distinctly different ways in which these imparticularly in early childhood education portant tasks of sense-making and self(Barton, 1986; Egan, 1987, 1993; Paley, portrayal can be accomplished. 1990). Stories are an early genre of discourse that children learn to speak publicly (Mi-

Before considering the variety of stories found cross-culturally, however, I draw atMAY 1997

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tention to how much variation in storytelling exists within one culture. For example, European and European North American taste for detailed description in novels has declined dramatically from Victorian to modern times (Logan, 1993). Contemporary European North American parents (and their children) differ in the extent to which they foreground description (setting) versus plot in conversational narratives (Peterson & McCabe, 1992), as well as in the lengths of narrative they tell on a regular basis. European North American girls tend to foreground conversation when they tell about past personal experiences more than do boys (Ely & McCabe, 1993). Thus, variation within a culture is as remarkable as variation between cultures. In fact, inclusion of stories from diverse cultures may result in a more likely match for those children whose cultural storytelling values are very different from or even at odds with their individual ones. Moreover, cultures that are grouped under such labels as European North American or African American or Asian American or Latino actually are composed of distinctly different cultures themselves, and such differences affect storytelling. For example, Vera John-Steiner asked children of a number of cultural backgrounds to retell the same, specially commissioned storybook. Stories retold by Sioux children contained significantly more actions, whereas Navajo children's retellings included many references to members of the hero's family and explicit cultural themes such as "for your p e o p l e " (John-Steiner & Panofsky, 1992). Differences in narrative structure also have been found among groups that share some E u r o p e a n heritage. For example, Hungarian children, unlike European North American children, often embellish the stories they retell and use cohesive devices such as causal links significantly more frequently (John-Steiner & Panofsky, 1992). In spontaneous dinnertime narratives,

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Blum-Kulka and Snow (1992) found that 80% or more of the European American narratives involved children as active participants. Israeli families, however, told narratives that involved children only about half of the time; the remaining narratives involved only adults. In the same study, 60% of the narratives told in American workingclass families involved events known both by the teller and someone else at the table— reminiscences—whereas narratives told by American middle-class families only involved such shared experiences 30% of the time. Middle-class American narratives involved experiences known only to the teller over 60% of the time (Blum-Kulka & Snow, 1992). For these reasons, as I discuss some cultural differences in storytelling that highlight the diversity among members of various groups, I am mindful of the dangers of grouping people, as well the risks in using group labels, with their unplanned but inevitable obsolescence, in any discussion of diversity. That is, I have sought to use labels that many individuals within groups tell me are the ones preferred at this time. S o m e Diverse Traditions of Storytelling In the following discussion I highlight some forms of storytelling valued in several cultures. To do this, I use a number of methods for analyzing narrative, describing these briefly. No form of analyzing narratives works equally well for all cultures. Telling Plots Vladimir Propp (1928/1968) analyzed Russian fairy tales a n d found that most such tales involved one of a limited number of basic plot structures. His work has been translated into story grammar analyses, in which the representation of problem solving is considered a critical prerequisite of a true story. If this standard is applied, children's productions that do not contain such problem solving are said to be primitive

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(see Peterson & McCabe, 1983, for further discussion of this point). By the time they go to school, American children of European extraction tell personal narratives that resemble fairy tales in form (Peterson & McCabe, 1983). Specifically, in research with almost 100 European North American children from southern and midwestern backgrounds, we found that these children tell stories that contain complete problem-solving backgrounds 40% of the time at age 6 and over 60% of the time thereafter. Carole Peterson and I have also found that children from European backgrounds living in Canada tell narratives identical to midwestern and southern American narratives in form. In other words, although there are regional influences on phonology, no such influences have been found on storytelling form. By age 6, European North American children tell stories that meet almost all European North American conventional expectations of what a good story is: they begin by telling their listener who and what was involved and when things took place. They build a series of events up to a high point, often the solution of some problem they or others have confronted. Along the way, these children often articulate goals that were precipitated to solve the central problem of the story, and they reflect on whether or not such problems were ever resolved. In so doing, European North American children typically enumerate the particu l a r s of s i n g l e e x p e r i e n c e s t h a t are meaningful to them; in other words, they tend to talk about one important happening at a time. In a Canadian sample of almost 1,400 narratives, in fewer than 2% of these did children talk about events occurring at more than one time or place within the same narrative. From the age of 5, they tended to sequence several events in these oral stories (Peterson & McCabe, 1983). Moreover, in one midwestern sample, the sequence of events in European North American children's narratives matched the

real-world sequence of events 99% of the time. Thus, many European North American children come well equipped for the kind of stories they hear in school, which tend to be of this form. Furthermore, the factual narratives and fictional stories they produce conform to the definition of quality provided by story grammar, or by Aristotle's view that stories should have a clear beginning, middle, and end, or by the ubiquitous notion that stories should contain a clear temporal sequence of events that matches some sequence of events in the real world. For example, the following narrative from a 6-year-old European North American boy begins with a synopsis of his narrative, then the child orients his listener by telling about when his arm was broken. He details what led up to a terrible event, pausing to evaluate that event with orientation about its most direct cause (the hard surface) and evaluation of the result ("two triangles"). After receiving an indication of continued interest from his listener, he describes how things were resolved (an operation), ends the narrative with a coda about having a cast now, and includes an invitation to sign it. Such a narrative matches the structure articulated by Labov (1972) and is typical of 6-year-old lower- and middleclass European North American children (McCabe & Peterson, 1990; Peterson & McCabe, 1983): Nick: Hi Sue. I broke my arm. I was, well, um, well, urn, um, the day, 2 days ago. I was climbing the tree and I, Well see, I went towards the low branch, and I and I got caught with my having suit? I dangled my hands down and they got bent because it was like this hard surface under it? Then they bent like in two triangles. [Interviewer on phone responds] Yeah, but luckily it was my left arm that broke. [Interviewer: Who was home?] Only my mom was, my mom was in the shower, so I screamed for Jessica, and Jessica goed told my mom. MAY 1997

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[Interviewer: Did you see Dr. Vincent?] I don't have Dr. Vincent. I had to go to the hospital and get mm, it was much more worser than you think because I had to get, go into the operation room, and I had to get my, and I had to take um anesthesia, and I had to fall, fall, fall asleep, and they bended my arm back, and I have my cast on. Do you want to sign my cast? Such stories h a v e b e g i n n i n g s ("You know what? I broke my arm!"), middles (linear sequence of events that constitute some one happening), and endings ("That's all") that are easily read as such by educators who are familiar with this European North American tradition. Compressed Collections of Experiences In contrast to the often lengthy stories t h a t detail single experiences a n d frequently revolve a r o u n d the solution of some problem that are told by European North American children, Masahiko Minami and I (Minami & McCabe, 1991) have found t h a t J a p a n e s e c h i l d r e n living in America tend to tell concise stories that are cohesive collections of several experiences they have had. In response to a prompt to talk about one time when they were injured, all but two of 17 5- to 9-year-old Japanese children talked about two to four different times they were injured, in one conversational turn. Each experience is summarized briefly, often (59% of the time) in a scant three lines of elaboration. This is in marked c o n t r a s t t o stories b y E u r o p e a n N o r t h American children at comparable ages, whose narratives consist of 10 or more independent clauses plus additional subordinate clauses—all devoted to single experiences (Peterson & McCabe, 1983). In many ways, then, Japanese children's stories of real experiences resemble haiku. The children's relative restraint reflects the Japanese cultural value of avoiding verbosity that would insult listeners and embarrass narrators, a value their parents remind them of frequently, both explicitly and in

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more subtle ways. In the unified collection of three injury experiences below, injuries are contrasted to each other and described in elegantly succinct language, language that omits p r o n o u n s , copulas, and other items that are easily inferred by listeners. There is also a progressive movement from victimization to mastery of the hurtful intrusions. This narrative was collected, translated, and analyzed by Masahiko Minami, a native speaker of Japanese: Shun: As for the first shot, got at Ehime. Hurt a lot. As for the second shot, knew would hurt. Didn't hurt so much. The next one didn't hurt so much either. As for the last shot, you know, didn't hurt at all. If one rearranges the narrative above, grouping lines thematically into collections that have been termed "stanzas" (Gee, 1991; Hymes, 1982), one can see a distinctive form emerge from such an interpretation. Note that, in this version, omitted pronouns are inserted into brackets to facilitate translation into English: Shun:

As for the first shot, [I] got [it] at Ehime. [It] hurt a lot. As for the second shot, [I] knew [it] would hurt. [It] didn't hurt so much. The next one didn't hurt so much either. As for the last shot, you know. [It] didn't hurt at all.

This method of analyzing narratives as if they were poetry often has proven useful to individuals seeking to make sense of narratives that seem strange to them. Because in using the method one attempts to see regularities of form inherent in narratives, this type of analysis seems less procrustean than others. Specifically, stanza analysis presumes no ideal or standard form to which all stories are compared. In contrast, many alternative analyses compare a given nar-

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rative to some ideal structure (see Peterson & McCabe, 1983, for further discussion of the use of ideal comparison structures in studying narrative development). For example, the problem-solving episode is central to ideal story grammar structure (Botvin & Sutton-Smith, 1977; M a n d l e r & Johnson, 1977). The limitation of this latter approach is that such ideal structures are often culture-specific. Recall that story grammar analyses derive from the analysis of Russian folktales. In addition, a child's narrative that would be classified as primitive using story grammar guidelines frequently would be classified as ideal using an alternative approach (McCabe & Peterson, 1984).

pean North American children (Rodino, Gimbert, Perez, Craddock-Willis, & McCabe, 1991). In other contexts, however, such as "sharing-time" sessions with their peers, African-American children have been recorded telling lengthy stories. One such ethnographic study recorded a second grader who told a narrative for 6V2 uninterrupted minutes (Michaels & Foster, 1985). That narrative consisted of approximately 112 transcribed lines, a remarkable achievement. In the following interchange with an African-American interviewer, Mignonne Pollard, a 9-year-old African-American girl, deftly links several tooth-pulling incidents into a humorous story, unified by the theme she articulates memorably at the end. This narrative has been interpreted in terms of stanzas that reveal considerable regularity in terms of averaging four lines per subtopic.

In teaching courses on ways to analyze narratives, I found that some people have extraordinary facility in discerning the patterns intrinsic to others' productions. In fact, stanza analysis is one of the easiest analyses to get people to agree on with relatively little practice. Furthermore, stanza analysis illuminated most of the narratives my colleagues and/or I collected from Japanese (Minami & McCabe, 1991), South African (Malan, 1992), and African-American (Gee, 1991) children, although it has provided substantially less insight into narratives from European North American and Latino children. However, Gee (1991) has successfully used stanza analysis on some European North American children's narratives. Returning to the issue of the form of Japanese children's narratives in particular, perhaps the ubiquity of three-line haiku and proverbs in the children's lives plays a role in the remarkable regularity of the stanza structure in their narratives (Minami & McCabe, 1991). Improvising on a Theme In a sample of six 7-year-olds, AfricanAmerican children told conversational narratives the same length as those of Euro-

Vivian: We went to the dentist before and I was gettin' my tooth pulled and the doc, the dentist said, "Oh, it's not gonna hurt." and he was lying to me. It hurt. It hurted so bad I coulda gone on screamin' even though I think some . . . I don't know what it was like. I was, in my mouth like, I was like, "Oh that hurt!" He said no, it wouldn't hurt. 'Cause last time I went to the doctor, I had got this spray. This doctor, he sprayed some spray in my mouth and my tooth appeared in his hand. He put me to sleep, and then, and then I woke up. He used some pliers to take it out, and I didn't know. So I had told my, I asked my sister how did, how did the man take it out. and so she said, "He used some pliers." I said, "Nah, he used that spray." V 1997

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She said, "Nope he used that spray to put you to sleep, and he used the pliers to take it out." I was, like, "Huh, that's amazin'." I swear to God I was so amazed that, hum... It was so amazing, right? that I had to look for myself, and then I asked him too. and he said, "Yes, we, I used some pliers to take out your tooth, and I put you to sleep, an, so you wouldn't know, and that's how I did it." and I was like, "Ooouuu." and then I seen my sister get her tooth pulled. I was like, "Ooouuu" 'Cause he had to put her to sleep to, hmm, to take out her tooth. It was the same day she got her tooth pulled, and I was scared. I was like, "EEEhhhmmm." I had a whole bunch cotton in my mouth, chompin' on it 'Cause I had to hold it to, hmm, stop my bleeding. I, one day I was in school. I took out my own tooth. I put some hot water in it the night, the, the night before I went to school. and I was taking a test. And then it came out right when I was takin', when I finished the test. And my teacher asked me, was it bleeding? I said, "No It's not bleeding, 'Cause I put some hot water on it." And so my cousin, he wanted to take out his tooth, and he didn't know what to do, so I told him. "I'm a Pullin' Teeth Expert." "Pull out your own tooth, but if you need somebody to do it, Call me, and I'll be over." When performing stories for their peers, instead of for an adult as the previous child was, African-American children may begin

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a n d end w i t h a t h e m e , i m p r o v i s i n g on events in between these two points in a fashion reminiscent of jazz compositions (Craddock-Willis, 1990; Rodino et al., 1991). For example, in a remarkable narrative discussed by Michaels and Foster (1985), a boy began by mentioning Thanksgiving dinner, recapitulated various animal visits to his h o m e , b e n i g n a n d t h r e a t e n i n g (e.g., " I snuck out to the door, and there was a mama raccoon . . . with five babies"), only to return to the original theme: "And we had some pumpkin pie for dessert." In another narrative originally analyzed by Gee (1991), Karen Craddock-Willis (1990) remarks that a little girl begins and ends a lengthy discussion of how her family baked her grandmother an extraordinary number of cakes with the phrase, "Today it's Friday the 13th, and it's Bad Luck Day," a phrase that served in some sense to contextualize why her grandmother became sick. In short, these compositions have their own version of beginning (theme), middle (improvisation on the theme), and end (return to the theme). Hyon and Sulzby (1992) asked 48 African-American kindergartners to tell a story about anything they chose to an adult interviewer. In this context, one-third of the children told w h a t those researchers described as a topic-associating story, which m e a n t that the narrative was organized around a series of implicitly linked anecdotes or episodes that happened at different times to different people and did not adhere to a simple linear pattern of organization. However, 60% of the children told what Hyon and Sulzby called a "topic-centered" story, a narrative organized around a single object or experience that occurred at one time and place and involved key characters that remained the same throughout. Such narratives followed a linear pattern of organization with a clear beginning, middle, and end. Again, it is important to recognize diversity within any one storytelling tradi-

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tion and to value a variety of different story forms equally. Although some African-American narratives thematically interweave several experiences that may strike uninformed list e n e r s as d e p a r t i n g from a s t r i c t l y chronological sequence of events, such as in the examples above, African-American children usually plot numerous sequences of events within the context of the individual experiences combined (Rodino et al.; 1991). African-American children's and adolescents' written narratives frequently contain many stylistic devices such as irony, alliteration, rhyme, and metaphor (DaubneyDavis, 1991; Pollio, Barlow, Fine, & Pollio, 1977). In all these ways, then, AfricanAmerican children's narratives might be said to mirror features of African-American novels that have been appearing on bestseller lists, novels such as Toni Morrison's jazz (1992).

shown in the following narrative collected by Carmella Perez, a bilingual researcher, from an English-dominant Latino child: Eva: My sister's sick, um, because she had a big eye like that. And they, and she's supposed to stay in the hospital. Interviewer: She was supposed to stay in the hospital? Eva: Yeah, and she stayed a long time. Interviewer: She stayed a long time? Eva: Yeah, but she don't like that. And they starting to come again. Interviewer: They starting to come again? Eva: Yeah, one Sunday, we went to the, you know, to church. And then, and then that wasn't on her. And then when we tooked to the hospital to get my [unintelligible], I stayed there with my father. And Mommy scolded her— Joanna. His name is Joanna. And then Mommy called. And she was worried because she, um, Joanni needed to stayed. So we went to, to see her. And then we, we—I, I needed to stay at my Titi's house. And que ya venia pra, pra

pa his house. Interviewer: Mmmhum. Well she came, what until she came back to your house. Eva: Yeah. Sometimes I stayed with my father when he didn't had to work. And sometimes yeah, and sometimes no.

Foregrounding Family Connections, Backgrounding Plot Puerto Rican first graders have been found to generate action routines with no evaluations or resolutions in their personal narratives (Gutierrez-Clellen & Quinn, 1993). Colleagues and I engaged in some exploratory analyses of oral personal narraThis narrative contains few real events, tives of Latino children from Puerto Rican and the dominant past tense verb is "stay," and Central American backgrounds. Our repeated six times, a verb that does not consample contained one child whose parents vey much action. The point of this story is were both from Puerto Rico, one whose par- not some sequence of events that lands the ents were both from the Dominican Repub- sister in the hospital or any resolution of lic, one whose parents were both from El that trauma. Instead, the point is the conSalvador, one whose mother was from trast between the sister's stay in the hospital Puerto Rico and father from Santo Do- (three uses of that verb) and the consequent mingo, one whose mother was from New need for the narrator herself to stay with her York and father from El Salvador, one father (and others) on account of the sister's whose mother was from Puerto Rico and traumatic sojourn. father from New York. The children casuOf course, there is enormous diversity ally identified themselves as Puerto Rican. among groups and individuals who could We (Rodino et a l , 1991) found that only collectively be referred to as Latino. Howabout half of the narratives from Latino ever, although even Latino children's native children we spoke w i t h c o n t a i n e d se- language varies, there seems to be a comquences of specific past-tense events, as is mon de-emphasis on sequencing past MAY 1997

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events. In a sample of English-speaking Mexican-American children, Cano (1992) found that all six 7-year-olds produced at least one sequence of two or three events in their conversational narratives, but no sequences exceeded four events in length. Actions accounted for approximately 34% of narrative comments on average. By way of comparison, 57% of the narrative comments of European North American children consist of simple past tense actions (McCabe, 1996; Peterson & McCabe, 1983). Instead of focusing on action, the Latino children interviewed often e n u m e r a t e d their family connections to events, places, and even times. Although family members frequently appear in the narratives of children from all the cultures mentioned above, and although analyses to date have primarily been qualitative (Rodino et al., 1991), Latino children talked in more detail about more family members than did children from other backgrounds. Although the full monologue is too long for this article, the following is an excerpt from one such Latino child, a 7-year-old girl from El Salvador (the full discourse, originally in Spanish, took about 5 minutes): Carmen: Well I [was] in the hospital, in the Mass General Hospital—there where my Uncle Roberto works. That he has two children who are not twins but who are only two children because first Robertico was born, who is named after his dad, and then Christopher was born.... But my Uncle Roberto have a dog who is one of those German ones, who is already 2 months old. And now, because the mom's name is Butterfly. She is with a man whose name is, who is my uncle whose name is Juan. And by chance he gave him that dog. But look that dog, he bits Alex because he runs and bits much. Here he bit him, and he bites him even in the face and here in the arms.

Again, events leading up to and occurring during her stay in the hospital are not

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the ones she talks about. Instead, Carmen describes her family connections to that hospital, and even her dog's family connections that are intertwined with her own. The form of such stories, in other words, reflects broad cultural values. As Shorris (1992, p. 218) puts it, "In the traditional Latino family, the rules follow rural traditions. . . . Each person understands himself and his role in terms of the family." The Latino children's stories are rich in descriptions of locations and ongoing activities, as well as family members. In fact, Nobel prize-winning novelists like Gabriel Garcia-Marquez (1967/1970) exhibit stylistic features similar to those in the stories of the children above. Narrative Structure in Other Cultures Although there are enormous gaps in k n o w l e d g e of the structure of stories in many cultures, some information is available about storytelling styles in which children from a few other cultures are steeped (e.g., Miller, Potts, & Fung, 1989; Miller, Potts, Fung, Hoogstra, & Mintz, 1990). Hawaiian children occasionally tell a teasing kind of story, with much overlapped contribution from their peers (Watson, 1975). Children of mixed race and language backgrounds in South Africa often tell narratives that increasingly employ repetition, parallelism, and refrains in a hauntingly poetic fashion (Malan, 1992). Children from Athabaskan communities may periodically tell n a r r a t i v e s c o n s i s t i n g of r e p e t i t i o n sequences (Scollon & Scollon, 1981). Cultural differences in a d u l t s ' narratives (Chafe, 1980) and in adults' and children's conversations about the past (Ochs, 1982; Schieffelin & Eisenberg, 1984) have also been established. In short, experience can be described in very different ways by people of different cultures. Cultural differences in how to tell a story are as much a part of accent as are differences in pronunciation, vocabulary,

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and syntax. Yet few people hear differences in storytelling style as part of accent. Instead, they sometimes dismiss stories from different cultures as simply "not making sense," as if that property were an objective, culture-free one. Most of the time such dismissal results in a failure to communicate between two peers. However, when such failures to communicate occur in circumstances such as in a school (Michaels, 1991), courtroom (Barry, 1991), or clinical assessment (Perez, McCabe, & Tager-Flussberg, 1997), the effect of being misunderstood is more profound due to the disproportionate power of teachers, lawyers, and psychologists over children. For example, clinical psychologists rated Latino narratives such as those above as significantly more "illogical" and "incomprehensible" than European North American narratives and were inclined to make a diagnosis of developmental delay on the basis of such narratives (Perez, 1992). Thus it is vital that adults who work with children recognize, appreciate, and value cultural differences in storytelling style.

tell stories but also because the way people tell stories affects their comprehension of stories from traditions other than their own.

Effects of Storytelling Differences on Classroom Life There is an important caveat to bear in mind in using information about cultural differences in narrative structure: not all children from any one background bring the same kind of oral narrative structure to school with them. As I have emphasized throughout this article, educators must recognize that individual differences abound within one culture (McCabe & Peterson, 1991) and must assess students on a case-by-case basis. If we are mindful of this, then, we see that cultural differences in storytelling style affect classroom life in many important areas: (1) children's comprehension and memory of stories they hear or read at school, (2) curriculum (i.e., reading materials, testing, and writing assignments), and (3) social interaction. These effects occur not only because of differences in how people

Comprehension and Memory Many researchers have demonstrated that the way one produces stories affects the way one understands other stories. Although most of the following studies were framed as basic research in cognitive psychology, their results are germane to reading instruction. For example, when adults hear stories from a different culture and attempt to retell them, they omit much information and reshape other information by substituting words more familiar to them and leaving out enigmatic information (Bartlett, 1932; Dube, 1982). Adult readers write better summaries of stories for which they have an appropriate set of culturespecific expectations, or culture-bound schema, than for stories from a different culture. Furthermore, repeated retellings of a North American Indian story that deviated from English-speaking European North American college students' own schemas showed substantial changes from the original by these individuals (Kintsch & Greene, 1978). Foreign scripts are incorrectly remembered to be more like North American scripts by North American adults (Harris, Lee, Hensley, & Schoen, 1988). Recently, Palauan and American eleventh-grade readers read culturally familiar and unfamiliar passages in their own language. Students used different, more efficient strategies when confronted by texts from their own culture than when confronted by texts from a different culture, texts that did not meet their expectations. Students also recalled significantly more ideas and elaborations and produced fewer distortions for the culturally familiar rather than for the unfamiliar passage (Pritchard, 1990). Because the present article is aimed primarily at early childhood and elementary school educators, of most relevance is the fact that, when preschool children of differMAY 1997

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ent ethnic b a c k g r o u n d s retell the same story, they do so in distinctive ways. For example, in one study although the total amount said by Puerto Rican and AfricanAmerican children did not differ, the nature of what they recalled was different; Puerto Rican children recalled significantly more d e s c r i p t i o n and less action t h a n did African-American children 0ohn & Berney, 1968; John-Steiner & Panofsky, 1992). Invernizzi and Abouzeid (1995) examined the ways in which elementary school-aged European North American and Ponam children from Papua, N e w Guinea, recalled two European tales. Although the Ponam children recalled significantly more propositions from b o t h stories t h a n did the American sample, they omitted many of the constituents (affect, consequence, resolution, and moral) that would be required in order for their recalls to meet good story grammar standards. What these studies suggest is that children, as well as adults, comprehend and remember better stories that conform to the structure of the kinds of stories they have heard at home. Narrative is the primary means by which children make sense of their experience (Hymes, 1982). To put together a coherent narrative of some event that has happened to one is to sort through the confusion of life's happenings, extract the most salient events, arrange them in some order, highlight the importance of certain of these events for t h e listener—in short, to make sense of that experience. Similarly, people remember stories from different cultures in ways that make those stories conform to the kinds of stories they expect because such stories become more sensible in the reshaping of them. To the extent that stories in schools are disproportionately from the European North American tradition, as are instruction and assessment of comprehension, students from other cultures are likely to be considerably disadvantaged by this mismatch of their oral form and the written forms they encounter.

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Curriculum Materials. For children on the cusp of literacy, instruction in reading should be meaningful. For students w h o display a narrative structure not familiar to a teacher, the teacher should read stories that conform to that structure, particularly if students do not seem to be engaged by European North American stories. However, some caution is required; one survey (Burt, 1992; Burt & McCabe, 1996) of texts touted as being multicultural reveals the following assortment: (1) Numerous European North American stories contain illustrations of children from diverse ethnic backgrounds but are not otherwise multicultural. (2) There are also strange mixes of basal readerlike language and supposedly ethnic values. (3) Some stories have cultural themes but are written with unmistakable story grammar structure, often by European North American authors. (4) Finally, texts contain a few authentically structured tales from various cultures and countries, but these are often presented with no background information that w o u l d facilitate u n d e r s t a n d i n g for those who do not share the background of the culture giving rise to the story (Burt, 1992; Burt & McCabe, 1996). Harris (1991) reviewed African-American children's literature within an historical perspective and recommended adoption of texts that constitute an authentic body of lite r a t u r e w r i t t e n a b o u t a n d for AfricanAmerican children. Almost without exception, such books, Harris noted, are written by African-American authors, despite the fact that they need not be (Gates, 1991). A well-considered multicultural literacy curriculum mindful of cultural differences in narrative structure would include numerous stories written by African-American, AsianAmerican, Native American, E u r o p e a n North American, and Latino authors. These stories should be read to and by all students in all grades. Enough of each kind should be available so that students could come to appreciate the form of stories told by cul-

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hires not their own. A full fifth of each school year could be devoted to stories of each major group. Such an approach would allow all students sufficient exposure to stories and cultures that they do not share but could come to appreciate, while ensuring that all students would share a home background in narrative that is commensurate with school for part of the school year. Explicit discussion of story structure. Talking about different forms of stories to all students will provide them with the rich metalinguistic vocabulary they need to work with their own stories, while enabling them to understand those from different cultures. An exchange of information with children and parents of various cultures represented in the classroom would enrich everyone's understanding of stories from these cultures. Delpit (1986,1988) called for explicit instruction of children not from the "culture of power" in the rules of the culture of power. It seems to me that such explicit instruction needs to go not only both ways, but more than both ways. That is, to train students to read world literature by such authors as Morrison and Marquez, teachers have to prepare them from the very beginning of language arts instruction. Waiting until students reach college and asking them to read such new classics without much exposure to or understanding of the rules of language use and storytelling traditions in the cultural background of the authors does not seem a judicious strategy. Discussion of traditions that gave rise to stories is imperative for understanding stories from cultures not one's own. Celebrations. Teachers may want to engage in extended celebrations of various cultures—one at a time and in enough depth that students can understand each one—through art, music, dance, and, of course, stories, pointing out aesthetic values that transcend these specific forms. Again, only through exposure to a number of different examples of a particular form of story does the form itself become apparent. A sin-

gle exposure, especially if it does not include information about the culture that gave rise to the story, is likely to backfire, leading to dismissal rather than acceptance and enjoyment. Testing. Similarly, testing should reflect an awareness of the kind of information a student is likely to extract from a story. Schoolchildren are often asked to reconstruct sequences of events as a means of assessing comprehension of stories (e.g., Baker, 1982). Reconstructing a sequence of events is also often used in basal reading systems as a means of ostensibly "increasing reading ability" (Harris & Sipay, 1990). However, in light of what is known about Latino children's narrative structure, for example, this kind of assessment may need to be reconsidered. The movement in literary criticism to recognize the role of readers in responding to literature (e.g., Beach & Hynds, 1991) could be invoked here; that is, simply because children of different cultures recall the same story in different ways (Invernizzi & Abouzeid, 1995; John & Berney, 1968) does not mean that some have "correctly" understood that story whereas others have not. Writing stories from students' own culture. Having students dictate or write their own stories would be an ideal forum for developing stories that have a structure students comprehend. Unfortunately, research has documented cases where children who do not come from European North American families are misunderstood in, for example, process writing conferences (Michaels, 1991; Michaels & Collins, 1984). Teachers may not know what questions to ask to help a student extend her story, tripping her up or cutting her off instead of helping her (Michaels, 1987, 1991). Writing story forms from other cultures. Trying to write literary forms not indigenous to one's own culture is difficult. For example, unless one appreciates the fact that Japanese parents routinely train their MAY 1997

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children to engage in empathic extension of w h a t they hear and, w h e n speaking, to avoid garrulousness insulting and offensive to empathic listeners (Minami & McCabe, 1991), one w o u l d completely m i s u n d e r stand the communicative compression that is the essence of haiku. Although the form of haiku is often taught in American classrooms, examination of the results of such instruction reveals that European American students tend to see haiku simply as short sentences consisting of the prerequisite number of syllables, not condensed expression. Consider the following haiku I collected from fifth graders in Vermont: American

I can feel the wind. I smell smoke walking in woods. I hear birds in trees. Swimming

You get very wet. You can have a lot of fun. You get very cold. Contrast those samples with the following haiku by Japanese children (translations into English by Masahiko Minami, 1990, focus on meaning rather than syllable counts): Japanese second grader

A foot-race My heart is throbbing; Next is my turn. (Kumon Education Institute, 1988) Japanese fourth grader

Although it is cold, The Statue of Liberty Stretches herself.

(Gakken, 1989)

Both of the Japanese samples distill a story into a short but true poem, and the reader is invited to imaginatively extend these provocative pieces, w h e r e a s the E u r o p e a n North American efforts describe general experiences, with many filler syllables (e.g., J, you, can, get). The rules of instruction for haiku are simple: Each poem has three lines with 17 syllables in five-, seven-, and five-syllable

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lines. How much more explicit could the rules be? The rules have not been changed since they were imported from Japan. Yet instruction should be different in the two locations. American students need to have it pointed out to them that Japanese discourse does not employ pronouns with anything like the frequency that English does (Clancy, 1980). American students need to have the value of succinctness, as well as the value of counting on your listeners to elaborate on what is said, spelled out for them; Japanese students do not. The latter have been steeped in these values for years (e.g., Doi, 1971; Lebra, 1976). Thus, without provision of information about communicative values underlying various literary forms, efforts to emulate the literary forms of cultures not one's own may not succeed even when those forms are as short as, and have as clearly prescribed rules as does haiku. Avoid asking students to switch forms frequently. What would seem a promising route of instruction would be to encourage students frequently to tell their own stories the way they want to in view of the fact that such stories are so critically a matter of self and self-presentation. To convey to children that somehow they are not getting their own stories straight would seem to lead to alienation. The current educational focus on sequencing actions and representing problem solving needs to be supplemented with other kinds of foci in writing instruction. For example, the development of connections among characters and the use of metaphors should be seen as at least as important to narrative as the a r r a n g e m e n t of events in a sequence. Rules of thumb for students from unfamiliar cultures. When confronted by students from cultures about which little information exists regarding preferred story form, teachers might do the following: 1. Assume that children's narrative productions have narrative form instead of the lack of it. 2. Use writing instruction as a means of getting a child's story on paper so that the

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educator can reflect on it and see form and sense-making that were not apparent in the fast pace of oral conversation. Helping students depict their stories in stanzas as if they were poems (as in the case of the Japanese and African-American narratives above) may be one way to see such form. 3. Give beginning readers at least some stories that will make sense to them. When teachers do not have stories from the students' culture, using students' own stories (dictated at first) as a primary text might be the best means of accomplishing this end, provided teachers are prepared to accept the students' notions of a story. Alternatively, asking students' parents to provide stories on tape that could then be transcribed might also work. Evidence of the effectiveness of culturally relevant instruction. Research (e.g., Vogt, Jordan, & Tharp, 1987) has documented increased effectiveness in reading instruction that is culturally compatible in terms of classroom processes (administration of praise, means of discussing stories, etc.). But perhaps one of the best documentations of the potential for including stories from students' own culture in their reading assignments comes not from educational research but from a clinical psychology treatment program termed "Cuento therapy" (Constantino, Malgady, & Rogler, 1984, 1986). In that project, the authors used Puerto Rican folktales (cuentos) to reduce anxiety and aggression among high-risk children, ages 5-8. Stories selected were those that best expressed thoughts, feelings, values, and behaviors representative of Puerto Rican culture and stressed themes such as social judgment, control of aggression, and delay of gratification. Although prior studies had shown that it is difficult to involve Latinos in therapeutic services, this program had no difficulty doing so. In the successful treatment conditions, therapists and mothers read either original or modernized versions of the stories bilingually to children. They all subsequently

discussed the stories and dramatized parts of them. The effectiveness of this 20-week program was evident at its completion: children in cuentos therapy had significantly lower scores on the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, fewer reports of aggression by teachers using Constantino's Behavior Rating Scale, and significantly higher comprehension scores using the Wechsler Intellig e n c e S c a l e for C h i l d r e n - R e v i s e d Comprehension subtests. The effect of lowered anxiety was also evident at a followup assessment done a year later. The authors did not stress the benefits of such a program on children's literacy skills, although the benefits of parental bookreading are well known (e.g., Wells, 1985). Social Interaction Teachers and students from different cultures. In various ethnographic studies, Michaels (1991) recorded numerous interchanges between European North American teachers and European North American students and between African-American teachers and African-American students in which teachers correctly perceive narrators' intentions, ask appropriate questions, and help students round out and organize their narrative accounts. Unfortunately, Michaels (1991) also documented incidents in which European North American teachers who have been accustomed to discourse about circumscribed topics misunderstand students whose culture allows them to use a narrative discourse consisting of a series of implicitly associated personal anecdotes, dismissing these as "rambling," or "not talking about one important thing." Minami (1990) found that the beautifully ordered simplicity of Japanese children's narratives struck some American teachers as "boring" or "unimaginative." Students from different cultures. Many studies (e.g., Finkelstein & Haskins, 1983; Newman, Liss, & Sherman, 1983; Singleton & Asher, 1979) document the troubling fact that simply placing students of different cultural backgrounds in the same classroom MAY 1997

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is no guarantee that they will interact with each other, let alone positively. Various programs (e.g., Slavin, 1985; Weigel, Wiser, & Cook, 1975) that encourage cooperative learning have been devised to promote such cross-cultural exchanges. However, unless teachers understand that there are diverse ways of communicating and inform students about such differences, barriers to cross-cultural communication among students may remain, even in these contexts. That is, students often form impressions of personality characteristics on the basis of other children's discourse style. In observations of a diverse classroom of 6-year-olds, Rebecca Keebler (personal communication, March 4, 1993) recorded one African-American girl commenting on how frustrating it was when her European North American classmates continually criticized her, her family, and her friends for their performances in "sharing time narratives." Dora told Keebler, "But some people say, 'It's n o t t r u e . ' It m a d e me feel b a d . . . . Because it hurts a lot of people's feelings when they say t h a t . . . like my sister. She told a story when she was 4 years old in her c l a s s . . . . She told a story about a cat and everybody said, "That's not true. You're joking. You're not telling the truth.' And that made my sister cry." Another example of cultural misunderstanding occurs in the following narrative I collected by a 9-year-old European North American girl, Alice, who was drawing her f a v o r i t e a n i m a l , a cat, r e g a r d i n g h e r African-American art partner: " H e w a s teasing about cats. He was saying like I'm going to bomb all the cats and I'm going to make a picture of a pool with a cat in it and the pool will explode. He said the worst things—like airplanes dropping bombs on kitties and bad things like that. I just go, 'well nothing happens in real life so you can't make me sad.' Stuff like that." Such small failures to communicate occur often in numerous classrooms. Without some sort of information to the contrary,

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Dora and her friends and family were left w i t h the impression that the E u r o p e a n North American children were being mean rather than simply repeating the rules for storytelling that they had probably heard from their parents. Similarly, Alice was left with the impression that her partner was trying to be mean rather than trying to have fun conversing with her. Teachers could serve as translators for s t u d e n t s from different t r a d i t i o n s , a n d h o l d i n g discussions centered on books would be one opportunity to do so. Teachers could discuss the fact that AfricanAmerican storytelling traditions emphasize the value of telling dramatic stories. Zora Neale Hurston (1935/1990, p. 8) and Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (1988, p. 56), note that lies is a traditional African-American w o r d for figurative discourse, tales, or stories. Similarly, teasing is a common language game among African Americans and is frequently either the point of a story or part of what is recapitulated (Labov, 1972). For example, Irene and the Big, Fine Nickel by Irene SmallsHector (1991) is a story that involves teasing games played by African-American children and could serve as a vehicle for discussing such games. Students could be encouraged to notice the strategy the girls in the story use to make up with each other after the teasing goes too far for one of them. R e d u c i n g Prejudice Many people avoid discussion of cultural differences out of a sense that only attention to universals of human conditions is nonracist and a concern that talking about cultural groups smacks of oppression and stereotyping. By discussing differences within the framework of aesthetic sensibility, however, I hope to make clear that cultural differences are valued, valuable, and deeply embedded. Avoidance of such discussion has usually meant that the Western European inheritance was presented as if it were universal. The overarching goal of multi-

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cultural literacy programs should be to steep all students in information about many cultures and consequently many kinds of stories. Racism, poverty, and asymmetrical power relations permeate daily life in many U.S. classrooms. A serious multicultural literature program cannot eradicate the pernicious effects of these aspects of society. It cannot make a poor child rich or a less powerful group powerful. However, there is some evidence that reading stories about children from cultures not their own can diminish prejudice. Katz and Zalk (1978) compared the relative effectiveness of four short-term intervention techniques for modifying negative racial attitudes in 140 "white, non-Hispanic" students. Second and fifth graders were tested on a variety of attitude and behavioral measures 2 weeks afterward, with a follow-up test 4-6 months later. In the story condition, children were asked to listen to a story, accompanied by slides of African-American or European North American characters. The story was 15 minutes long. This was minimal exposure to a standard (probably Europeanstyle) story, yet simply showing such children a story about an African-American child reduced prejudice as assessed by such measures as the Katz-Zalk Projective Prejudice Test, the Koslin Social Distance Scale, and behavioral distance measures. This effect of reading about members of different cultures was particularly strong in the short-term assessment with second graders, especially if an African-American person presented the story to them. In the followup, children of both age groups who heard the story about an African-American child displayed less racist attitudes than children who heard the same story with white characters. If such minimal exposure to stories could reduce prejudice, then substantial exposure to stories from different cultures might have a more profound effect, especially if teachers systematically exposed younger children to such stories. In other

words, reading stories from different cult u r e s m a y n o t e l i m i n a t e racism from schools, but it might reduce it. Some readers may w o n d e r whether there is any such thing as a bad story and, if so, what that might be like. When Carole Peterson and I asked European N o r t h American adults to rate the quality of children's stories coming from that tradition, we found that stories rated as of poor quality lacked evaluation, representation of problem solving, a n d / o r elaboration (McCabe & Peterson, 1984). In other words, in these stories children did not seem involved or could not tell them very well because they were too young or inexperienced. In terms of printed stories, aesthetic issues are more complex. I believe that a book succeeds when it engages a child's attention and that teachers need to use a wider variety of books in order to engage all students' attention. Future Research Despite the substantial work on narrative reviewed in this article, much more research needs to be done. Production Concerns Considerably more research needs to be done to delineate the structure of narratives produced by students from all the diverse backgrounds included in classrooms today. Oral and written, personal and factual narratives—all should be the object of study. However, researchers are advised to concentrate on oral personal narratives to begin with because of the predilection of even very young children for producing them (e.g., Preece, 1987). This work needs to employ all of the many narrative analyses available and to be prepared to go beyond these if confronted by forms that do not seem adequately represented by existing analyses. Researchers are encouraged to refrain from automatically applying one favorite analysis to the stories of all cultures and to seek to embed a consideration of narMAY 1997

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rative structure in a broader understanding of cultural values. Such research also needs to depict dev e l o p m e n t a l s e q u e n c e s in s t o r y t e l l i n g forms within diverse cultures. Mindful of such trajectories, teachers could better facilitate development of storytelling that will be congruent with a child's home culture. If a culture values action, for example, teachers w o u l d u n d e r s t a n d that requests for more action will readily be understood by children from that culture. In order to successfully tap children's narrative skills at school, teachers need to have a clear picture of the possibilities—the kinds of narratives students are capable of producing given optimal circumstances. Can a n d s h o u l d teachers a t t e m p t to switch s t u d e n t s ' storytelling form? This question has been interpreted to refer to switching all students from non-European b a c k g r o u n d s into the E u r o p e a n N o r t h American tradition that so dominates educational practice involving storytelling. Numerous studies have shown that explicit ins t r u c t i o n in aspects of story s t r u c t u r e captured in story grammars increases children's comprehension of European story forms (see Pearson & Fielding, 1991, for a review). To date, however, there is less evidence that instructing students in European-based storytelling conventions " i m p r o v e s " the productions of children who do not already tell stories centered a r o u n d problem-solving episodes. H o w rich is typical instruction in producing stories at school? Some researchers (e.g., Hemphill & Snow, in press) argue that literacy goals for telling stories at school are frequently not made explicit, so that even European North American children often fail to match teachers' expectations about story retellings, for example. Unfortunately, it almost goes without saying that there is also no evidence that educators can effectively instruct students with European heritage in the conventions of producing diverse nonEuropean storytelling forms.

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Not only is evidence lacking that students can switch storytelling style, there has not been a sufficient debate about the ethics or the aesthetic desirability of that goal (see Delpit, 1986, 1988, for an extensive treatm e n t of this sensitive issue). W o u l d all agree that teaching a child from a nonEuropean culture to tell European-style stories is a clear "improvement"? Such a debate would need to pay close attention to the burgeoning success of writers from nonEuropean backgrounds. Comprehension Concerns As noted above, explicit instruction in story grammar increases children's comprehension of European and European North American story forms (see Pearson & Fielding, 1991, for review). Is such instruction equally effective for children of diverse backgrounds? Research needs to address issues posed by presenting children with stories from cultures that are not their own. Basal readers often include a story or two taken from American Indian groups—how well do students comprehend these stories if they do not share that background? How many stories do children need to read from an unfamiliar culture to begin to notice formal similarities? What kinds of explicit instruction might help them arrive at such an understanding sooner? Researchers could develop methods of assessing comprehension of materials from non-European cultures that would be of use to teachers. Genre Concerns There are m a n y h e a t e d , if often illconsidered, debates about whether fictional or personal narratives are better suited to classroom instruction or whether expository materials are as good or better than narratives (see McCabe, 1996, for further discussion). For classroom practice, those who are not ideologues wisely employ diverse materials, and in this article I call for even more diversity in those materials. For researchers, another goal might well be to

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a d d r e s s the acquisition of diverse genres of narrative as well as of exposition, w i t h a v i e w to h o w instruction in one genre affects p e r f o r m a n c e i n o t h e r s (e.g., see L a n g e r , 1986).

tural Literacy Programs Might Do with Cultural Differences in Narrative Structure," given at the forty-second annual meeting of the National Reading Conference, San Antonio, Texas, December 4, 1992.

Conclusion In this article I h a v e a t t e m p t e d to r e m o v e one s t u m b l i n g block to the introduction of serious multicultural literature-based curricula by e x p a n d i n g the existing definition of a good story. Stories bear family resemblances to each other, b u t I w o u l d eschew attempts to d o c u m e n t defining features of stories in general a n d g o o d stories in particular. In my view, a good story m i g h t be long a n d detailed or short a n d compressed. It could be descriptive, explicit, or it m i g h t evoke images t h r o u g h suggestion. A good story m i g h t h a v e a fast-paced, sequential action plot or consist of colorful, a n c h o r e d family vignettes. A g o o d story m i g h t concentrate on the particulars of one experience or it m i g h t w e a v e together several explicitly or i m p l i c i t l y r e l a t e d o n e s . A g o o d s t o r y m i g h t resolve s o m e p r o b l e m , or it m i g h t present the plight of a victim u n a b l e to resolve anything. A g o o d story m i g h t reveal a lot a b o u t the narrator directly, as, for exa m p l e , in a story a b o u t a n a r r a t o r ' s heroic rescue of a brother in distress, or indirectly, by articulating the n a r r a t o r ' s family connections. A good story m i g h t tease, please, s a d d e n , inform, w a r n , or entertain. A g o o d story m i g h t h a v e a clear beginning, m i d d l e , a n d e n d , or it might h a v e " n o e n d i n g s " or h a v e a u t h o r s w h o " h a d n o t p u t events i n the order of m a n ' s conventional time, b u t h a d concentrated a c e n t u r y of daily episodes in such a w a y that they coexisted in one i n s t a n t " (Garcia-Marquez, 1967/1970, p p . 176,382). There are m a n y k i n d s of good stories.

Note Part of this article is based on a presentation entitled, "Chameleon Readers: What Multicul-

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