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The Whole World Shook: Ethnic, National and Heroic Identities in Children’s Fiction About 9/11

Jo Lampert   

Popular discourse tells us that on September 11, 2001 the world changed. This thesis examines how cultural identities are constructed within fictional texts about 9/11 written for young people. It locates three identity categories within these texts: ethnic identities, national identities, and heroic identities, analysing a selection of picture books, young adult fiction and comics. The shifting identities which may be evident in texts that are being produced for children about 9/11 contribute to educating young readers about themselves, others and the world in which we now live.

Transcript

Interviewer: I’d like to welcome Jo Lampert, welcome Jo

Jo Lampert: Hi

Interviewer: Jo can you please share with us what your Research is about?

Jo Lampert: Okay well the title of my Research is The whole world shook: Shifts in national ethnic and heroic identities in children’s books about September 11 so what I’ve done is I’ve looked at eleven children’s books about the terrorist attacks on September 11 and I’m having a look at them to see what they can tell us about how identities have shifted and what their dominant discourses are in these texts.

Interviewer: How did you go about collecting the data and what were your major findings?

Jo Lampert: Alright well when I first started the project I probably wasn’t sure that any text would be written about September 11 in some ways it seemed unlikely but has it happens well over 50 books have been produced for children about 9/11 and so I’ve chosen a combination of picture books and young adult fiction and a collection of DC Comics about September 11.

Interviewer: How did you go about looking through those texts and analysing what was in them?

Jo Lampert: I’m really doing a narrative discourse analysis so I’m looking at the verbal and the visual text, I’m looking for certain discursive features including plot and narrative and also textual features like net force syntax etc. but I’m also really interested in the kind of post structural analysis so I’m looking at the binary of positions in the text, the gaps in what’s said and I’m trying to puzzle out what they’re actually telling us about the world in which we now live.

Interviewer: What were your findings and what are the implications of what you found?

Jo Lampert: Well I found a world that is both changed and not changed in a kind of an interesting mix of discourse that existed before 9/11 and things that have changed now so for instance the kind of ideas about multiculturalism and diversity that existed before 9/11 are problematic now after 9/11 so on the one hand these books still picture a world where we’re living in harmony but at the same time there are all sorts of complicated things that they say about the world but it’s a world of good and evil and it’s a world where these are the good people and these are perhaps the bad people so it’s a kind of a complicated mix of a whole lot of discourse, it’s a world where to behave heroically for instance the citizen now needs to be both assertive but also kind of a humble everyday firing kind of hero as well.

Interviewer: What are the implications of this Research for Education?

Jo Lampert: Well I think there are a number of things, first of all it takes seriously the idea that children’s books are a cultural artefacts, that they both respond to what’s going on in the world and also they produce ideas that children will pick up about what the world will be like and how they should be in the world, it also takes a kind of a cultural temperature of the world after September 11 and gives a better idea of the dominant discourses and the ways certain ideas are privileged in these books after September 11, it also suggests how identity is produced through textual……..through text and through discourse itself it shows how these ideas about who we should be come about through discourse and finally I suppose it suggests ways that teachers might have to mediate these texts and it might show the way about which ideas are in these texts and where there are gaps in stories say about 9/11 or about terrorism or about crisis in the books that are being produced.

Interviewer: Is there anything else you’d like to say about your Research?

Jo Lampert: Only that the book themselves are fascinating, that they’re a really surprising graphic mix that show a crisis moment like September 11 in really both explicit and implicit ways and that they remind us that children are recipients of that information.

Interviewer: And that sort of thing should be obviously taken into consideration for syllabus in schools and how this is going to effect these children in the way they see the world?

Jo Lampert: That’s right

Interviewer: Okay we might finish up there, thank you so much for your time

Jo Lampert: Thanks Anna