the brownies’ book: du bois e a construção de uma referência literária para identidade negra infanto-juvenil

In the period from January 1920 to December 1921 a cooperation between Jessie Fauset, Augustus Dill and W.E.B. Du Bois resulted in the publication of a periodical called “The Brownies’ Book” (TBB) the first publication for North American black, and not white (colored people) children and young people. The creation of “The Brownies' Book” (TBB) was a pioneering event in African American literature in general and, more specifically, in the field of African American children's literature, as it was the first periodical composed and published by African Americans for black children who, until then, searched in vain for material that included a perspective on their experience and history. This article argues that the TBBs were one of the harbingers of the movement called the Harlem Renaissance, constituting a children's literary materialization of the path towards the emergence of what the philosopher Alain Locke called the New Negro. What was being formulated was both the deconstruction of stereotypes associated with blacks and the active projection/creation of a positive identification with their local and ancestral community. This paper seeks to identify the post-WWI discursive strategies and practices of de-racialization proposed for “the children of the sun”, as W.E.B. Du Bois called them, in order to stop seeing themselves “through the eyes of others” (Du Bois, 1903).

What Can Danish Multicultural Children’s Literature and African American Children’s Literature Learn from Each Other?

In its pedagogical context, multicultural literature is defined as an instrument for multicultural education that seeks to include and raise the voices of historically silenced and invisible minorities in the school curriculum.The contemporary American definition of multicultural literature emphasizes #OwnVoices and elevates authentic stories from insider perspectives, while in Denmark, no clear line is drawn between the author’s background and the literary content when categorizing multicultural literature that depicts minorities’ experiences. In this article, an African American scholar and a Danish scholar will put Danish and African American children’s literary histories in dialogue with one another and ask what Danish multicultural literature can learn from existing definitions within American multicultural and African American children’s literature, formulated by Rudine Sims Bishop, Mingshui Cai, and Michelle H. Martin. They will also address what literary movements and practices might be adapted to facilitate a more welcoming space for minority stories in Danish literature. In the United States, lively conversations are occurring about insiders vs. outsiders, #OwnVoices, and stereotypes; what are the implications for Danish children’s literature? The writers will analyze recently published works from each country that depicts the lives of minoritized people such as Özlem Cekic and Dorte Karrebæk’s Ayse får en lillebror (2018) and Derrick Barnes and Gordon C. James’s Crown: An Ode to the Fresh Cut (2017). This comparative analysis will highlight how marginalized and silenced voices bring new perspectives and fresh ideas into the cultural conversations of each country that would otherwise go unrepresented in children’s literature.

A de Grummond Primer: Highlights of the Children’s Literature Collection

The first book-length project on the Collection, edited by Carolyn J. Brown, Ellen Hunter Ruffin, and Eric L. Tribunella, includes unique aspects of the holdings in scholarly essays written by children’s literature “notables.” Along with over ninety full-color images, the book examines the Collection’s strengths: Fairy tales, 19th Century periodicals, African American children’s literature, the Golden Age of illustrated books, early books for children, and many more.