Using literature to educate students about conflicts concerning identity, religion and perspectives: Ten Things I Hate About Me and Does My Head Look Big In This?

The aim with this study is to demonstrate how the protagonists in Randa Abdel-Fattah´s novels Ten Things I Hate About Me and Does My Head Look Big In This? deal with conflicts concerning identity and religion but also to show how teachers can work with diversity and different perspectives with students. In this essay, the assumption is that most teenagers probably have many similar experiences in their lives despite differences. I attempt to show how teachers can use literature in the classroom while educating their students about multiculturalism and identities. The essay shows how Abdel-Fattah’s two books can help an ESL teacher in the classroom. My argument is that these two novels would work well as tools to educate students about multiculturalism, identity and Islam. The study argues that the conflicts in the two novels could be recognized by many students and therefore useful to work with. The Swedish school system is built on a common value-system that says that we should help the students become democratic citizens. We should also discourage all sort of discrimination. In this essay I show how using fiction can do this. Several parts from the novels are high lighted to show how I believe one can use them for education purposes. To support my arguments I use theories such as: Your teen´s search for identity by Bellows and Teaching diversity by Gonzalez-Mena and Pulido-Tobiassen. They have helped me to prove that it is positive to use fiction, and furthermore that teenagers do have similar issues as the protagonists. The essay thus argues that these books could help students to understand themselves, others and different cultures.