Who Writes for Black Children: African American Childrens Literature before 1900
(Paperback)
Publishing Details
Who Writes for Black Children: African American Childrens Literature before 1900
By (Author) Katharine Capshaw
Edited by Anna Mae Duane
University of Minnesota Press
University of Minnesota Press
1st July 2017
United States
Classifications
Professional and Scholarly
Non Fiction
Age groups: children
Literature: history and criticism
810.99282089
Physical Properties
Paperback
400
Width 178mm, Height 254mm, Spine 51mm
Description
Who Writes for Black Children unlocks a rich archive of largely overlooked literature read by black children. From poetry written by a slave for a plantation school to joyful "death biographies" of African Americans in the antebellum North to literature penned by African American children themselves, this volume presents compelling new definitions of both African American literature and children's literature.
Reviews
"Was any literature written specifically for black children living before 1900 in the Western Hemisphere By posing this question, Capshaw and Duane force a reckoning with a gap in childrens literature studies that is predicated on the assumption that slavery invalidated a space for black children to consume literature."V. A. Murrenus Pilmaier, University of Wisconsin-Sheboygan
"The volumes strength lies in the interdisciplinary perspectives it provides on both African American childrens literature and the experiences of African American child-readers."The Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth
"Striking the hard-to-accomplish balance between in-process scholarly exploration and textbook framing, this collection manages not only to profess but also, impressively, to teach."MELUS
"Who Writes for Black Children is a compelling collection of scholarly essays and primary material that will be valuable to anyone interested in the history of childhoodor in book history, reading and reception history, materiality, ephemera, or interpretation. Examining poetry, fiction, biography, illustrations, periodicals, friendship albums, pamphlets, marginalia, and more, the collection analyzes the goals and rhetorical strategies of diverse genres published for African American children and (perhaps) read by them."Journal of American History
Author Bio
Katharine Capshaw is professor of English at the University of Connecticut and the author of Civil Rights Childhood: Picturing Liberation in African American Photobooks (Minnesota, 2014) and Childrens Literature of the Harlem Renaissance.
Anna Mae Duane is associate professor of English at the University of Connecticut and coeditor of the journal Common-place. She is the author of Suffering Childhood in Early America: Violence, Race, and the Making of the Child Victim.
