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영어

This paper discusses An Na’s A Step from Heaven as a multicultural narrative for American children and young adults. First of all, this paper describes why the multicultural education has been important in the American school curricula. By reading An Na’s novel as a multicultural narrative I have delineated how An Na’s text offers children/adolescent readers the chance to learn about YoungJu’s interior struggles, issues of language and culture, and her family’s socioeconomic realities. This paper also attempts to analyze how an American national identity was negotiated and formed by the difference in the multicultural and assimilationist ideologies or rejected while immigrants are categorized as the unassimilable as seen in case of YoungJu’s father within the discourse of multiculturalism. Lastly, this paper discusses how positively YoungJu’s relationship with her mother influences her life as she negotiates her complex identity as a Korean American woman.