Counseling Diverse Populations Book Report

The Book I chose is Afterlife by Julia Alvarez

Counseling Diverse Populations Book Report

Target Skills: CACREP standard 2.F.2.d: understanding the “impact of heritage, attitudes, beliefs, understandings, and acculturative experiences on an individual’s views of others”

Vanderbilt Writer in Residence Alice Walker encouraged her audience to read fiction at a recent diversity talk at V.U. School of Nursing. Scholarly books and articles are important resources, but the narratives in fiction, she said, transports you into the time and space inhabited by people with identities different from our own. Dean’s Diversity Series 9-11-20

For this assignment I would like for you to read a title from the Book Report List or another of your choosing that employs some degree of narrative to address any of the major topics we’ll be covering this semester. Your choice should provide perspective about some aspect of difference that you imagine you might encounter in your counseling practice. That perspective could be broad, as might be found in a nonfiction title about institutional issues, or micro-level as might be found in the point of view of the protagonist in a work of fiction. Either is fine.

Please read your selected book with answering the following prompts in mind.

1. Provide a short (2-3 paragraph) synopsis of your book.

2. What identity groups/positionalities does your book feature? You may want to list or diagram the power and privilege differentials between them. Note: power and privilege disparities are in evidence even if members of both/all groups do not appear in your book. (This section addresses CACREP standard 2.F.2.e: understanding “the effects of power and privilege for counselors and clients.”)

a. What evidence do you find for the existence of these power and privilege differentials? Please describe three or more examples.

3. How could you frame these differences in another way?

a. If your book is a nonfiction exploration of how the Jim Crow laws of the 1960’s affect people living in the south today, you might want to use data or case examples from your book to go more micro and share how that history might affect an individual of color living in the south today.

b. If your book is a work of fiction, can you identify the systemic factors that may have played into the characters’ circumstances or reactions there to?

4. Discuss insights resulting from your reading. How has reading this book changed the way you think about members of diverse populations?

1. How do you imagine these insights might inform your future work as a counselor? Examples:

a. Typical help-seeking behaviors within various populations

b. barriers and prejudices encountered by members of various populations, and how these may be manifested in the counseling relationship

c. spiritual beliefs common among various populations and how they should inform the counselor’s modality and treatment decisions

Format and APA Components:

title page including full book title

Level two headings used to label your responses by prompt number/letter.

in-text citations for direct quotes or reference to additional sources.

This paper should be between 5 full and 7 pages of double-spaced 12-point type.