Bridges (2013)

Bridges Katharine Capshaw Smith Hurricane Sandy had just rolled through a week before, leaving much of New York and New Jersey without power. But at New York University a group of intrepid folks gathered to talk about the state of publishing for children of African descent at a conference titled "A is for Anansi." The event was organized by the Haitian American writer and scholar, Jaira Placide, and the poet Rashidah Ismaili. Participants brought great energy to describing their own investments in black children's literature: creative writers, publishers, academics, illustrators, reviewers, teachers, and reading advocates all came together for a few days of provocative and invigorating discussion about the rigidity of the canon of children's literature and the particular rewards of an Africanist perspective on aesthetics and culture. Perhaps the most enlightening conversation happened at the panel "If I Ruled the World," populated by three young people; one middle school student and two high school students reflected on the reading interests of their peers, challenging us as teachers, librarians, and parents to recognize the multiplicity of their desires. Why isn't the generic variety of children's literature—fantasy, speculative fiction, mysteries, graphic novels, romances, detective stories— reflected in the black children's books that arrive in classrooms? What are the publishing structures that impede the circulation of these forms? (I came to wish that the ChLA would stage a "Children's Panel" at each year's conference. We talk so much about the needs of the reader and the voice of the child; we could make room to hear their voices.) As Sirah Sow, a student at the Nightingale-Bamford School for Girls, argued, we ought to recognize that children are "filters and not sponges," that they read critically and think about the versions of black identity and experience offered by publishers and teachers. Georgina Falu of City College of New York spoke movingly about the ethnic and national diversity of young urban populations, focusing on children with heritages from Central America and the Caribbean. ChLA members like Zetta Elliott reminded us that production within nontraditional genres actually does exist, offering a list of three dozen [End Page 1] speculative fiction texts by authors of African descent. Stacy Whitman of Lee and Low Books impressed upon us the need to build awareness of the variety of forms that already appear within black children's literature. But the field also needs new voices—new writers, to be sure, and new commitments from publishers. As Michelle Martin asked in her keynote speech, "Why is it . . . that only 79 children's and young adult books of over 5000 published in 2011 were authored by Black writers?" The field needs new mentors and new scholars, those who will help revolutionize our English, Education, and Library Science programs. We need individuals to contribute to gatekeeping communities, like reviewing and librarianship structures, but also to reshape editing and publishing, as well as teacher education. Michelle Martin characterized these individuals as "bridges" who help connect and sustain young readers; Christine Taylor-Butler called them "boots on the ground." I think of the ChLA membership as passionate advocates for literature from diverse cultures, as the kind of bridges Michelle discussed, and I am proud of the work that we all do in our classrooms and communities. This issue of the Quarterly contains five incisive essays. "Of Mice and Women: Beatrix Potter's Bluebeard Story, Sister Anne" by Rose Lovell-Smith analyzes an understudied, perplexing, compelling text by one of our most famous writers. Lovell-Smith attends to the complications of the story, exploring its "peculiar conjunctions of realism and folktale reference in the text; its varied language use and resulting marked instability of tone; and its Victorian intertext [as] a jocular Thackeray rewriting of the tale of Bluebeard." Lovell-Smith concludes by placing Potter's work within a modernist landscape, arguing persuasively for the text's experimental narrative style. Victoria Grieve's "The Visual Production of Citizenship: Children's Literature of the Works Progress Administration, 1937-1942" offers a fully historicized account of the New Reading Materials Project, a collaborative publishing effort that issued more than two hundred children's readers. Grieve argues that "in...