You looked at them and wondered why they were so ugly; you looked closely and could not find the source. Then you realized that it came from conviction, their conviction. It was as though some mysterious all-‐knowing master had given each one a cloak of ugliness to wear, and they had each accepted it without question.
—Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye (1999, p. 28)
In his collection of theoretical essays The World, the Text and the Critic, Edward Said (1983) states that the text of all forms should retain a vast web of affiliations with the world, his concept known as the text’s worldliness. For him, the text, as a “being in the world”, is a “cultural object (…) with a causation, persistence, durability and social presence” (p. 148), or, as suggested by Ashcroft and Ahluwalia (2001), “It has a material presence, a cultural and social history, a political and even an economic being as well as a range of implicit connections to other texts” (p. 20). This worldliness of the text, therefore, as suggested by Said (1983), is central for the meaning making and interpretation
of the reader.
As a cultural object with social, historical, political, cultural and economic dimensions, children’s and young adult literature, just like its adult counterpart, has long been regarded as having a strong influence reflecting, both directly and indirectly, societies, cultures and histories (O’Sullivan, 2011). Also, as suggested by Neel Mukherjee, it offers “something away from the self, a vista of a bigger, wider, different world outside […] its capacity to imagine the lives of others” (Mukherjee, 2014, my italics). As early as the eighteenth century when it first came into existence in printed forms, interests, concerns and values of our societies have been echoed in children’s literature (Butts, 1992). In her discussion of contemporary comparative children’s literature, O’Sullivan (2011) states that children’s literature, as “a key field of cultural production that formulates a culture’s identity for the following generations, (…) provides young readers with the vocabularies they need to read the world into which they venture” (p. 190), and, like other types of literature and other academic disciplines, it reflects, both directly and indirectly, ideologies as well as certain social and cultural norms of the dominant groups of that particular period (O’Sullivan, 2011; Bradford, 2007; Becker, 1973).
In her juxtaposition of the narratives of literary and nonliterary accounts of children and young adults, Christine Wilkie-‐Stibbs (2008) suggests that, “the lines of demarcation between the two (fictional and nonfictional texts) are not as quite clearly drawn as one might imagine” (p. 11). On closer look, particularly
with so-‐called docu-‐novels, she further suggests that fictional texts have the potential to “evoke readers’ sympathy”, thus making “the fictional child characters (…) more “real” to the reader than the ontologically real child or children that are the subject(s) of government and policy reports” (Wilkie-‐ Stibbs, 2008, p. 12). Given children’s and young adult literature’s affiliation with the world as a cultural object with socio-‐political, historical, and economic dimensions, as well as the ability to evoke readers’ sympathy, I strongly believe that certain new viewpoints regarding the issue of internalised racism can be attained when explored through the eye of the fictional child.
My decision to make use of African American children’s and young adult literary texts is mainly because of the dearth of research carried out on this topic in critical literary studies, particularly that representing the province of children’s and young adult literature. Also, as the fictional texts selected for this study span almost nine decades of American history and capture racial issues that have been silenced during various historical periods, they are worthy of thorough investigation and are ideal for this study.
Although the focus of this study is on female characters, it needs to be pointed out that this particular racial issue is not strictly a black female experience. For males, such as Fourty-‐seven, a protagonist in Walter Mosley’s (2005) historical novel 47 or a group of male students in Spike Lee’s (1988) School Daze or even some of the minor characters in the focus texts, for instance, are also caught in the same web of self-‐hatred. And the experience, as this study will demonstrate,
is most devastating, particularly for the youngsters who are in the process of becoming, or, as suggested by hooks (1994a), who are “striving to construct positive identity and healthy self-‐esteem” (p. 211). Yet, whilst both females and males are oppressed by their race, black men, argues Collins (2013), are “privileged by their gender” (p. 14). This, together with the notion of childhood or youth, the point that I will raise and argue for in Chapter 2, is part of the main reason why the focus of my research is on the female characters, for they have come to represent lived experiences or realities of those who are most powerless, who actually occupy the bottom of social ladder (see more discussion of this topic, particularly its relation to CRT’s Intersectionality, in Chapter 2, Section 2.2). However, whilst gender might play a significant role, this study as a whole is attempting to offer transparency that is not muted by this factor.
African American Children’s and young adult literary texts selected for this study include: Tanita S Davis’ (2009) Mare’s War, Jacqueline Woodson’s (2007)
Feathers and her 1994’s I Hadn’t Meant to Tell You This, Sharon G Flake’s (2005)
Who Am I Without Him and her 1998’s The Skin I’m In, and Sapphire’s (1996)
Push. Together, these books and their authors have garnered numerous children’s and young adult literary awards, including—among many others— the Coretta Scott King Award (The Skin I’m In), the Coretta Scott King Honour Awards (I Hadn’t meant to Tell You This, Mare’s War, Who Am I Without Him), the Newberry Honour Award (Feathers), Margaret A. Edwards Award for Lifetime Achievement (Jacqueline Woodson), the Black Caucus of the American
Library Association's First Novelist Award (Push), ALA-‐YALSA Best Books for Young Adults (Who Am I Without Him, Mare’s War). From an historical point of view, the books cover almost nine decades of American history, from World War II to the civil rights and black movements to contemporary America. Thematically, they courageously tackle fundamental racial issues affecting the politics of black identities through the life of young protagonists as they struggle toward self-‐discovery, acceptance and empowerment against a racially prejudiced tide plaguing America today. And these are, as I have discussed in the Introduction, the basis of my selection, not the numerous awards they have garnered. These children’s and young adult texts, all through this study, are set against key examples of adult works, particularly Alice Walker’s (2004) The Color Purple, Toni Morrison’s (1999) The Bluest Eye and her 1997’s Paradise. The purpose of my inclusion of these adult texts, however, is not to make a comparative analysis, but to use them as catalysts or pointers for discussion.
As a contemporary African American Bildungsroman, or a novel of formation,
Sapphire’s (1996) Push tells the story of Precious, an obese, dark-‐skinned, illiterate 16-‐year-‐old girl who is constantly abused by her mother and expelled from school after her second pregnancy by her own father. Whilst most
Bildungsroman novels typically employ a third person viewpoint (Amoko, 2009), Push resorts to the first person, making the novel closer to an autobiography or ‘life writing’, allowing Precious, therefore, to recount her harsh reality from an authorial position. Through a first-‐person viewpoint, the novel traces the protagonist’s educational, moral, psychological, and social
journey from invisibility to liberation and empowerment. As one of the main themes in Push is teens and literacy, a number of studies coming out of education therefore focus on this topic. Although the term literacy covers a wide range of learning experience, most studies conducted, however, focus on reading and writing only (e.g. Lewis, 2011; Stapleton, 2004; Clark & Medina, 2000). As for literary studies, Push has been investigated through different angles. Dancu (2010) compares the film version of Push with Boyz n the Hood
using film theories and Cathy Caruth’s reading of traumatic experiences as her frameworks; Harkins (2007) and Donaldson (2005) explore the issue of incest and how it has always been a silent/silenced part in the US culture; Michlin (2006) studies the book’s oralised narrative using intertextuality or Signifying (see further discussion of this topic in Chapter 5 TRIUMPHED) to explain the protagonist’s ultimate self-‐empowerment; and Natov (2006) explores Push as one of today’s best realistic young adult novels. Though racism is part of an overall investigation of these studies, internalised racism is not part of the discussion, leaving this vital racial issue theoretically void.
Flake’s (1998) The Skin I’m In narrates the life of Maleeka Madison, a middle school girl burdened with the issue of low self-‐esteem as a result of having darker skin, and her journey to an ultimate self-‐acceptance and empowerment. The only critical study done on this book is by Brooks, Browne and Hampton (2008), focusing on the issue of colourism, also known as intra-‐racial racism, which refers to discrimination within the black community against those with darker skin and more African features—another issue that will be taken up by
this study, particularly in Chapter 2. Brooks, Browne and Hampton (2008) set up an experiment to find out whether a close reading of The Skin I’m In would help adolescent girls in their after-‐school book club enhance their critical thinking skills and lead to insight on gender and race. While educational in research methodology, the research does provide, through participants’ responses, interesting answers regarding colourism, though the bigger issue on gender and race is left unsolved. As for Flake’s (2005) Who Am I Without Him, a collection of short stories depicting the outcomes of twelve unique trysts of young black females in America, there are, to my knowledge, no critical literary studies available to date.
Woodson’s (2007) Feathers and her 1994’s I Hadn’t Meant to Tell You This and Davis’s (2009) Mare’s War are the least studied books in the group.
Feathers, set in the seventies, explores political and social changes and the direct aftermath of desegregated America, particularly towards the life young black pupils at Price School. I Hadn’t Meant to Tell You This, set in the nineties, turns its gaze to the issue of child abuse and incest. Both, however, unveil detrimental effects of living in completely segregated towns through the eye of their young characters. One critical study of I Hadn’t Meant to Tell You This by Freedman and Johnson (2000) looks at how teacher self-‐censorship of literature for early teenagers deprives the students of opportunities to engage in critical discussions of crucial racial issues. Mare’s War, told in alternating chapters between WW II and present day America, chronicles the life of a young black teenager growing up in the segregated South and later joining the African
American battalion of the Women’s Army Corps during WW II, part of American history that is hardly told. Apart from book reviews offered by publishers, newspapers and magazines, there are, to my knowledge, no critical literary studies of Feathers and Mare’s War available to date. However, as both— particularly Jacqueline Woodson—are prolific writers who have extensively explored African American lives in different domestic and public spheres through their child and young adult characters, their books are thus ideal for the present study.
Using CRT as the analytical framework, these six books and their narrative strategies will be critically analysed to seek new messages, viewpoints and positions, as well as to develop a new critical discourse concerning the issue of internalised racism presented in contemporary American children’s and young adult literature.