Complicating Race: Representation and Resistance Using Arab and Asian American Immigrant Fictions

Abstract

In this article, the authors argue that US immigrant fictions featuring Arab American and Asian American protagonists can serve as powerful, culturally responsive tools for disrupting the Black/White racial paradigm and facilitating discussions that can lead to more race-conscious educational spaces in preservice English teacher education and these students’ future classrooms. Using experiences teaching two US immigrant fictions, The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf (2006), by Mohja Kahf, and American Born Chinese (2006), by Gene Luen Yang, to two groups of preservice English teachers, the authors highlight the pedagogical possibilities and challenges of incorporating US immigrant fictions to complicate dominant constructions of race and promote understanding of immigrant student experiences. Readers—teacher educators and teachers—can adapt the described pedagogical approaches, given their teaching and learning contexts, in order to promote culturally responsive, race-conscious English instruction.