Critical Resource Review

Krishnaswami, Uma. Common Errors in American Children's Books with South Asian Characters or Content. 2000.
http://www.umakrishnaswami.com/commonerrors.html

While looking for scholarly pieces that reviewed one of my books or critically reviewed my focus topic, Asian Indian children's literature, I noticed one of the major themes of all of the articles I looked at was that there are many errors found in children's literature that depicts Asian Indian characters, traditions, and/or customs. Uma Krishnaswami is an Asian Indian author that writes children's literature and books for young adults. I chose to use this article as my scholarly piece because it was a great overview of all of the little articles that I had found and it was written by an Asian Indian children's author. Krishnaswami talks about having the right to write books on cultures outside of your own and making sure that since young readers are still developing their sense of the world, what they read should be accurate. While reading her first statements, I am reminded of the insider/outsider debate and who can write a story about a different culture/race. Also, I think back to, is what is written about a race/culture outside of your own, going to be accurate? Krishnaswami then goes on to back her argument up with errors that are commonly found among Asian Indian children's literature.

She starts out by stating errors that are found within the facts that are given in a story such as historical dates or even forgetting important facts. She then goes on to talk about the misnaming of things: errors in representations of the different religions or tribes. She talks about how having misrepresentations of facts can create the stereotypes that children form and will then have as their sense of the world progresses and grows. She goes on to talk about errors in spelling of names and words in the different languages and the errors in the voice of the books.

The main point the Krishnaswami is trying to get across in this article is you can write about races and cultures other than your own, you just have to be sure that what you are saying, putting down on paper, and illustrating is and accurate and factual portrayal of the culture/race that you are writing about. This could prevent stereotypes and misrepresentations of different cultures and races when children need that accuracy in reading material like diverse literature to develop their sense of the world.