Cry, The Beloved Country by Alan Paton

Cover of Cry, the Beloved Country:

Alan Paton: 

Movie trailer:

Rationale for piece: Even though Alan Paton is a white male, he was born in South Africa, and is a prominent author for South African literature. Cry, the Beloved Country is a beautiful piece of multicultural literature. This work incorporates family and culture and would be excellent at introducing multicultural literature. This story is long and full of many fundamental multicultural literature examples. Although this piece is difficult to understand, I believe that it would benefit the students to jump right into analyzing the effect of multicultural literature. of  It shows the tension between family, and two cultures. I think that this would be most effective in a four week long unit, with lots of planned activities to help students fully understand the multitude of the work, and to allow enough time for discussion and analysis in class.  For this piece, I included the movie trailer to help students visualize the work. Watching movie trailers of books before reading them can get students excited to read the work, especially for student who are more visual learners. If there was time available we would also take the time to watch several clips of this movie because it really helps students understand the plot line while they are getting used to writing style of Paton.