This is an issue I’ve wrestled with for a while, and felt challenged by when I was teaching.
Firstly, how good is literature by black and minority ethnic writers in this country? Then, what am I/we doing judging writing by the race/skin colour/nationality of its author? Isn’t literature an absolute, in the sense of it either being good/bad/indifferent? The question is then complicated by reflecting on the past, when perhaps works by such writers were not published or exposed to an audience, and also when people from those communities might not have had the opportunity to write, find an audience, be published: does this imply that there is ‘catch-up’ to be done, allowances to be made, and so on?
What about white critics passing judgements on literature and poetry written by members of other communities? Is there covert racism, is there on the other hand the potential for being patronising? As white critics and teachers, are we merely guilty of tokenism? Past (cultural) history has left us, it seems to me, with a massive can of worms here.
Let’s be a little more concrete. When I was teaching GCSE English and English Literature, a good number of years ago now, there was a compulsory unit of ‘Poetry from Other Cultures and Traditions’ which, as you can see from the label, put various works in their own, separate compartment. There was some interesting poetry, some that I really liked, and some that I thought was basically tosh. And I didn’t feel wholly comfortable with any of those judgements, but I had to teach 15 and 16 year olds to analyse and appreciate it, to write essays on it and gain marks… Why was it all in a separate box from the usual white/home-grown subjects like Seamus Heaney, Gillian Clarke, Simon Armitage, Carol Ann Duffy, all of whom I found it easier both to teach and appreciate because I was comfortable with the traditions from which their works sprang? How valid would comparison across those genres be?
I was always clear with students that there was no law saying they had to like a poem; they just needed to be able to explain why they did or didn’t like a poem, and give evidence to back up their opinion. I did not have a problem illustrating this approach when we were faced with some quite grim (to me) poetry by some of our more hallowed poets…
This leads me on to surmising that appreciation and analysis of poetry or novels written by members of different racial minority groups are possibly better taught by members of those communities, who would have the necessary contextual background and understanding to do them justice. And here, we are of course in dreamland, given the relatively small number of English teachers from such communities.
For me, these issues seems even more acute when I read of examination boards recently making deliberate choices to remove from examination specifications poetry by well-known, white British poets (such as Philip Larkin, for example) and replacing them by works from other cultures and traditions. Something, it seems to me, must be lost by depriving those who live in the country of making the acquaintance of some of its best poetry. And I don’t feel completely at ease saying that, either. Colonialism, empire, immigration and racism has a great deal to answer for.
One thing: I have no trust in any politician to make any useful suggestion or help the discussion forward. I am still struck by the utter idiocy of one M Gove decreeing that GCSE students should only study novels by British writers, thus depriving teachers and students across the country of To Kill A Mockingbird as an examination text; for all its faults, it allowed much mature discussion of growing up, parenting, community and racism, opening students’ eyes to a whole raft of ideas and issues relevant to them, their age and their world.
I wonder what other readers and teachers think about all this?