A case for interruption in the virtual English classroom with the graphic novel American Born Chinese

Abstract

This paper describes and interprets how preservice English teachers explore constructions of race and identity in the graphic novel, American Born Chinese, with a small group of adolescents from a mostly white community in the U.S. in the space of a virtual classroom. Findings indicate that the secondary students constructed characters’ feelings of racial and cultural inferiority as a matter of the individual rather than as a result of institutional forms of exclusion. The author argues for educators to attend more closely to the social, historical and political context within which a critical approach to teaching literacy is implemented. Implications for using technology to mentor preservice English teachers to explore systemic forms of oppression in their development as critical educators are discussed.