18 Global Readings to Empower Your Students
Posted on March 13, 2025
Over the past several weeks, the United States has seen an uptick in discriminatory rhetoric and a series of executive orders targeting many different communities, including migrants and asylum seekers, people of color, transgender and LGBTQIA+ folks, and people exercising their right to protest.
How can educators uplift students who are targeted by these policies? Sharing stories that reflect students’ identities is a great place to start. Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop, author of the groundbreaking article “Mirrors, Windows, and Sliding Glass Doors,” explains that sharing diverse stories in the classroom gives marginalized students a “mirror” in which they can see themselves in literature, boosting self-esteem and providing them with an affirming learning environment. At the same time, reading diverse books allows students who often find themselves reflected in the stories they read at school to discover a new perspective on the world, with the literature acting as a “sliding glass door” to help them understand and interact with a more nuanced worldview.
Below, we’ve compiled a list of 18 global reading “mirrors” to help students think about their identities with a sense of agency and pride.
The current administration has targeted several nationalities for deportation. Counter xenophobic narratives by teaching literature from one of these countries:
- From Cuba: “There is No Theorem (A Regguetón),” a musical poem about navigating life without a pre-ordained set of rules; and “Cinderella’s Secret Dream,” an energetic twist on the Cinderella story that follows a young woman who dreams of playing a telenovela villainess
- From Haiti: “We Cried a River of Laughter,” an imaginative essay from the Haitian diaspora on uncovering roots across three continents; and “Primal Needs,” an emotional story of human connection after experiencing disaster
- From Venezuela: “Making Peace,” a bilingual poem in which the speaker wonders whether a poem can ever break free from its poet
- From Nicaragua: “The Wandering Song” (original text available from the Cervantes Virtual Library), a poem in couplets about the job of an artist, who “salve[s] the sores of human beings”
Challenge myths about migration with these stories of immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers:
- For stories that specifically center immigrant youth, try “Hunger,” a short essay on being an undocumented Iranian teen during LA and New York’s punk era; “The Bed,” a story narrated by a Russian Jewish child whose family migrated to Brooklyn’s Brighton Beach neighborhood; and “Nothing to Declare,” a sci-fi story in which three siblings attempt a dangerous interplanetary migration.
- For perspectives on migration, try “Tell Me Where to Go,” a comic from Korea that imagines the asylum-seeking process in a dystopian future; and “A Short Guide to Being the Perfect Political Refugee,” a satirical comic based on an Iranian author’s Kafkaesque experience migrating to Paris.
Affirm LGBTQIA+ students’ identities with three global queer and trans stories:
- Read “Cavities and Kindness,” a sweet Japanese story of a trans woman getting over a breakup at the dentist; “Muzaffer and Bananas,” a Turkish story in which two boys ditch school to visit the zoo and find their relationship changing; and “Dori and Jina,” a postapocalyptic adolescent romance from Korea.
Read global stories of protestors standing up to injustice:
- Read “An Interview with Wu Wenjian,” a conversation with an activist who was imprisoned for participating in the Tiananmen Square protests in China; “Where Are You, My Love?,” graphic reportage on a LGBTQIA+ rights protest in Turkey; and “Two Million People in the Square,” a comic pamphlet that circulated during the 2011 Egyptian Revolution.
Finally, to spotlight global Black voices in your classroom, try Brazilian author Ricardo Aleixo’s poem “My Man,” which rebukes society’s often reductive view of Black men.