Insider or Outsider

When looking at diverse and multicultural literature I am sometimes stuck as Patrick Shannon is. I am a white, female elementary school teacher. What do I know about literature that is written by or about different cultures and races than mine? The fact is that I know a lot. During my time in Radical we would discuss literature that was mainstream, which was controvercial, but we also read books that was very diverse. This short, nice, shy school teacher actually knows somewhat about multicultural literature. But the real question of today's post is, can you really write a book on someone elses cultures and customs being an outsider, or do you have to be an insider, and have experienced this first hand. My personal belief is that you can write from either. However, if you are writing from an outsiders perspective, you better know exactly what you are talking about. There is absolutely no reason to provide sub-standard multicultural literature for children. For some children growing up in isolated communities, these books are the only thing that they have to judge other people on. They have no first hand experiences, so they rely on books to tell them. So if you are an outsider writing about someone else's culture, you need to have done your research. As we were able to see from Claire's collection last week with her Indian American literature, that at least with her collection, we are lacking insider's perspectives. They are there, and some will argue that these perspectives are more trustworthy, but there need to be more. If you are writing on the inside perspective however, you need to think of the audience that will be reading the story that you are putting out there. The audience will need to understand certain things about one's culture, traditions, celebrations rather than just slapping it on a piece of paper and saying that its finished.
I think when looking at my argument overall, I think there is a need for both insider and outsider authors. However, I will STRESS my beliefs that the piece of literature that you are putting out for the public to read needs to be truthful to the situation that you are writing about. There is absolutely no need to put incorrect literature into the world, which will only increase others misconceptions.