Reflections on the development of African American children’s literature

Bishop, Rudine Sims. (2012). Reflections on the development of African American children’s literature. Journal of Children’s Literature, 38(2), 5-13.


Rudine Sims Bishop here traces the history of African American children’s literature and how books by and about African Americans have changed and developed over the past 40 years. This history is also the history of Bishop’s own professional career, which means that she witnessed, documented, and indeed, lived with the changes she relates for us here, which adds weight and credibility to this short history.

Bishop’s account here resonated with me, because my own career as an educator led me to children’s literature during the same period she describes here. In 1980, the same year that Bishop marks as the year when she decided to focus on African American literature for her dissertation at Wayne State, I returned to my own university to take courses to become an elementary teacher (I was previously a middle school and high school English teacher) and took my first children’s literature course, which ultimately led to a lifelong love of children’s books and a career as a literacy educator. Thus, I felt a strong connection as I read Bishop’s article. Both Bishop and I lived through the times when African American children’s literature was carving out its niche in children’s literature, though of course we lived those times from different perspectives; she is an African American woman, and I am a European-American woman. Though during those times I liked to see myself as sympathetic to the need to make books by and about African Americans available to all children, I know I can never totally understand the struggle to make that happen as Bishop does.

In her dissertation, Shadow and Substance: Afro-American Experience in Contemporary Children’s Fiction, published in 1982, Bishop placed 150 books with Black characters written from 1965-1979 into three categories: 1) “Social conscience” books that dealt with Black-White conflicts and often had “exotic” Black characters and sympathetic White protagonists, 2) “Melting pot” books, which attempted to minimize differences between Black and White people, and 3) “Culturally conscious” books which focused on cultural distinctiveness while still emphasizing the things that make us all human. From the way Bishop presents her three categories in this article, it seemed to me that she saw them as a sort of continuum; she clearly writes about the “melting pot” literature as an improvement upon the “social conscience” literature, though there was still much to be desired from those books. I am not 100% sure I am accurately representing Bishop’s intent here, but she seems to say that things improved over time, though of course there is still a long way to go, and that the “culturally conscious” category represents the most desirable kind of children’s books. As I read about the categories, the names of various authors and their books flitted through my mind, and I found myself wondering which category Bishop would place them in. That made me want to read her more recent work to find out (more on the more recent book below).

When I took that first children’s literature course that fall of 1980, there was a lot of buzz about “multicultural literature”. As I savored that first fat children’s literature text (I believe it was Bernice Cullinan’s Literature and the Child ) I read about trends that were pointing to more and more books about African American children, about Africa, and by African American authors and illustrators. Names like Virginia Hamilton, Leo and Diane Dillon, Patricia McKissack and Eloise Greenfield ran through my mind. As I completed the reading of a required number of children’s books in several genres, I discovered some of these books and authors. I have followed a number of them as their work evolved and as I evolved, from children’s literature student to graduate teaching assistant teaching the same course I had taken (in the same room) to doctoral student, to professor teaching children’s literature courses and literacy methods courses that have a strong children’s literature focus. When I started, I believe many of the books that were getting the attention were more of the “social consciousness” category and the “melting pot” category. As we moved into the 1990’s and into the new millennium, though, I witnessed what I perceived as a gradual change toward what I see as more “culturally conscious” books, though some of the other two categories of books remained (and still do today).

As a European-American teacher educator, I have had some very difficult and awkward discussions about some of these books in my children’s literature courses. Sometimes these discussions meet with resistance, mostly from my White students, but sometimes also from my Black students. How can I, and the majority of my students (mainly White) possibly know what it would be like to never see characters in books that looked and sounded like us? How can we possibly know how minimizing it must feel to read a book that supposedly is about African Americans but that presents those characters as stereotyped caricatures or perhaps that presents characters with dark skins that look and sound like White characters? What would be the implications of reading a book about African American struggles in which a White character is the hero (a la Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird?

Some of the books in Bishop’s “social consciousness” and “melting pot” categories may have been written with good intentions, but the effects of books in those categories on African American students have to be painful. Even books that seem to be “culturally conscious” can sometimes be problematic. Because cultural groups consist of individuals with different life experiences, we always have to ask about “culturally conscious” books, “Whose culture?” and “Whose consciousness?” It’s a conundrum, and teaching about anything culturally linked can be a potential minefield, which may be why some educators shy away from deep discussions of some children’s books.

The depth of the conundrum has been illustrated powerfully for me by the resistance of some African American teacher candidates to the reading of some books that I, and maybe also Bishop, might place in the third and supposedly “better” culturally conscious category. When we examine these books in my classes, some of my African American students seem to me to be determinedly silent and without comment. It is almost as if they are wanting me to just leave it alone and go on to something else. Some who have spoken (usually in one-to-one conversations, not in class) tell me that some of these books present African Americans in ways that they do not identify with, and do not wish to be associated with. For example, when we recently looked at Eloise Greenfield’s anthology about a young African American child growing up in urban America, Nathaniel Talking, one of my older African American students said that the life of the child in that book was nothing like her life and upbringing, and that she resented books that made it look as if all Black people liked rap music and jazz, spoke in “slang” (her word for the African American Vernacular English dialect represented in Greenfield book) and lived in fractured family situations. There was a lot of pain behind that student’s resistance, pain I cannot ever even begin to understand. Talking about children’s books like the ones Bishop writes about can indeed be difficult, no matter how you categorize those books. Any time discussions turn toward race relations in this country of ours, things get uncomfortable.

When we have these uncomfortable discussions in my education courses, as I know we must if we are to truly include every child in the world of children’s literature, I often have to take deep breaths and proceed as carefully but as bravely as I can. Sometimes my hands and voice even shake when we touch on some of the painful topics we have to touch on if we are to look honestly at children’s literature in the U.S. and its relationship to this country’s long history of oppression, discrimination and their lasting effects. It would be easier not to have these discussions, but I know we must, even though there will be times when I say the wrong thing or touch a raw nerve, or when I meet with resistance. I definitely intend to read Bishop’s most recent book, Free Within Ourselves: The Development of African American Children’s Literature, which was published in 2007. I would like to read about how Bishop continues her story and her work. I look forward to the insights that Bishop can provide to help me face those uncomfortable discussions with more understanding and sensitivity.