Canon, Culture, and the Classroom: The Role of Literary Mentorship Today
In classrooms around the world, young readers are introduced to the literary “canon”—that collection of texts so often presented as timeless, foundational, and universal. Shakespeare, Homer, Dickens, Hawthorne, and Austen still preside over syllabi like gatekeepers of the literary tradition. Their works are revered for their enduring insight into human nature, their technical mastery, and their historical influence. And yet, as our cultural and demographic landscapes shift, so too must our understanding of what it means to study these classics.
Teaching the classics in a multicultural world is not about throwing away old texts. Rather, it’s about asking more from them—and from ourselves. It means reading them critically, placing them in dialogue with voices that have long been excluded, and finding new frameworks through which to engage with them. This process is where the guidance of skilled writing tutors and literary coaches becomes especially vital.
At its best, studying classic literature should be a journey of discovery, not just of language and form, but of voice, power, and identity. For many students, however, that journey can feel like a closed circuit. When the literature taught in schools overwhelmingly reflects a narrow cultural tradition—often white, male, Eurocentric, and upper-class—students from other backgrounds may struggle to see themselves in it. The result is not just disengagement, but an implicit message: this is not your story. This is not your inheritance.
Writing tutors and creative coaches play a critical role in breaking down these barriers. In one-on-one or small-group settings, they can create space for students to ask hard questions that may not find their way into the broader classroom: Why do we still read this book? What is it leaving out? Who was allowed to speak in this story—and who wasn’t? A good tutor doesn't simply reinforce the canon as it is handed down. Instead, they encourage students to interrogate it, to situate it in context, and to find their own interpretive power.
One of the most transformative ways to do this is by pairing classical texts with contemporary or historically marginalized ones. A tutor working with a student on Jane Eyre, for example, might introduce Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys—a postcolonial reimagining of Bertha Mason’s backstory. When read together, these texts complicate each other. Suddenly the madwoman in the attic is no longer a plot device but a silenced protagonist with a story of her own. The conversation expands, and so does the student’s critical lens.
Writing coaches can help students see that their responses to literature are not just reactions—they are contributions to an ongoing dialogue. By working through analytical essays, personal reflections, or even creative responses like poetry or retellings, students are empowered to reshape the meaning of texts rather than merely absorb it. This is especially important for students whose own histories or cultural traditions have been underrepresented in traditional curricula. When a student brings their background into conversation with the canon, they are not just “learning English”—they are participating in literature.
Moreover, tutors often have the flexibility to adjust their pedagogical methods to a student’s strengths. In classroom environments, time constraints and standardized goals can limit a teacher’s ability to individualize instruction. A student who has difficulty writing a formal essay on The Odyssey might thrive when invited to write a letter from the point of view of Penelope, or to compose a spoken word poem in response to the text’s themes of homecoming and displacement. A writing coach can validate this creative work while helping the student refine it into a polished, academic piece. The process isn’t about “dumbing down” the canon—it’s about drawing out the student’s critical and emotional engagement with it.
And yet, the challenges remain. Some argue that reworking the canon risks undermining educational rigor. But rigor is not synonymous with rigidity. Reading Sophocles alongside August Wilson, or Dante alongside contemporary immigrant memoirs, is not a dilution but an expansion. It allows for comparative analysis, contextual understanding, and cross-cultural insight. The role of the tutor here is to scaffold this complexity—guiding students through nuance, contradiction, and layered meaning. In doing so, they help cultivate not only better readers and writers, but more thoughtful, inclusive thinkers.
For aspiring writers, the implications are even more profound. Many writing coaches working outside the classroom help adult writers, especially those from historically marginalized communities, wrestle with the legacy of the canon. Some writers find themselves stymied by the invisible rules of “literary” writing—the expectation of a certain tone, subject matter, or aesthetic modeled on canonical authors who look and sound nothing like them. A skilled coach can help such writers unlearn these inherited constraints and reclaim their own voice. They may still draw from the classics—but they do so on their own terms, in acts of revision, reimagining, or joyful subversion.
The fact is, literature does not belong to any single tradition. It is a living archive, and its shape changes depending on who is looking—and who is writing. Writing coaches and tutors operate on the front lines of that evolution. They offer not just instruction, but liberation: the freedom to speak back, to reinterpret, to join the conversation as full participants rather than silent recipients.
In a multicultural world, we cannot afford a literary education that is monocultural. Nor can we afford to abandon the classics entirely. Instead, we must equip students with the tools—and the mentors—to see these texts in all their complexity: not as monuments set in stone, but as starting points for new stories, new voices, and new understandings.
And when a student, guided by a thoughtful writing coach, is able to write their own essay, poem, or novel that responds to—or resists—the canon, something remarkable happens. The canon doesn’t just survive. It grows.
