The Present Past: Black Authors and the Anti-Black Selective Tradition in Children's Literature

Autor/in	Gardner, Roberta Price
Titel	The Present Past: Black Authors and the Anti-Black Selective Tradition in Children's Literature
Quelle	In: Journal of Children's Literature, 46 (2020) 2, S.8-18 (11 Seiten) PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	1521-7779
Schlagwörter	Childrens Literature; Authors; African Americans; African American Literature; Racial Discrimination; Critical Theory; Critical Literacy; Race; Disproportionate Representation + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? 'Children''s literature'; Kinderliteratur; Author; Autor; Autorin; Afroamerikaner; Racial bias; Rassismus; Kritische Theorie; Kritisches Lesen; Rasse; Abstammung
Abstract	African American children's literature is a subcategory of diverse books that has benefited from critical theoretical research as well as historical and contemporary social movements. More recently, activist bloggers and online movements have extended the work of activist librarians and critically conscious educators and parents. These individual and collective efforts have helped to bridge public scholarship and academic research, generating a new wave of "Brown Gold," or what Martin (2004) described as the "Golden Age of African American children's picture books" (p. xii). The present evolution of African American youth literature expands the range of opportunities for all readers, particularly Black children and Black people, to "see themselves" within the pages of a book. However, despite the upward trend in the quantity of representations available (Cooperative Children's Book Center, 2018), the number of children's books both by and about Black people remains inadequate. According to the Cooperative Children's Book Center (CCBC), for example, there were 340 books featuring Black characters in 2018, and only 100 of these were by Black authors and/or illustrators (i.e., 29.41% #OwnVoices). While acknowledging previous and ongoing debates that contest inaccurate, demeaning, or stereotypical representations of Black people, in this article, the author places a particular emphasis on disrupting the colonist logic, utility, and objectification that are associated with representing Blackness and the Black experience without necessarily including Black people. She uses fundamental aspects of Black Critical Theory (BlackCrit; Dumas & Ross, 2016) and Afro-pessimism (Patterson, 1982) to define and describe an anti-Black selective tradition, the historical and continued practice of omitting, limiting, tokenizing, and disregarding Blackness, including Black voices, visualities, subjectivities, and, by extension, Black people's ways of knowing, being in, and narrating the world. She argues that progressing toward "where we ought to be" means making this anti-Black selective tradition in children's literature and the fungible nature of Blackness and Black authors less inconspicuous. Retrospective and contemporary examples of children's literature are included throughout this article to demonstrate that not just any Black book will do. (ERIC).
Anmerkungen	Children's Literature Assembly. e-mail: info@childrensliteratureassembly.org; Web site: https://www.childrensliteratureassembly.org/journal.html
Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2024/1/01