Where are the pre-1960s nonwhite children's books?

Last year, a lot of my thinking about all things related to children's literature culture revolved around money - class, wealth, etc. This year, it seems everything's about race. In fact, it's probably both (and a few other things as well), but the problem of racial underrepresentation is currently the most pressing, and shocking.

I'm working on my syllabus for a children's lit class in the spring. I've decided to just go with a mix of classics and obscure texts that cover a broad range of time. I'm sticking with Anglophone, mainly British and American, texts because they are what I know best. I've been eagerly adding titles to my list of possibles, dreading the moment when I have to actually make a decision and choose which stay and which get cut.
In reviewing my list, which has mainly concentrated on the 19th and early 20th century (since more recent texts that I want to teach I have in abundance), I realized: Gosh, all of my titles are by white authors, with white characters.
Then I thought: Wait, WHICH books by nonwhite authors and/or with nonwhite characters can I even think of from the decades before the 1960s?
Aside from some Langston Hughes and one or two other texts I've seen referenced in various people's scholarly work, I can't think of anything. The Hughes, and the references I remember, were mainly in the picture book genre, and I want novels or short stories. Not for or about teenagers, but legitimately children's literature.
So I turned to the Collective Brain of the child_lit listserv, because they always know everything there, and asked for nonwhite children's books, NOT picture books or poetry, from before 1960.

I have not gotten very many responses.
Most of those responses have directed me to Arna Bontemps and Langston Hughes. There have also been a number of suggestions of collected folktales.
Rudine Sims Bishop's Free within ourselves : the development of African American children’s literature has been recommended, and I am heading to the library tomorrow to get it.

But I feel discouraged that folktales and Langston Hughes are what we, as people who know children's literature very well, can come up with. Perhaps because I've recently been thinking about representations of American Indians (thanksgiving, of course), folktales and Langston Hughes, even, feel like they give the impression of a past, historical people. Like they don't deal with contemporary-to-their-time children. Hughes and Bontemps do, I think, though I'll have to do some more checking on that. But folktales?
Don't mistake me: folktales, the oral tradition, are hugely important, especially in any culture that has been marginalized and/or oppressed (in the case of African/Americans, denied literacy as slaves, and kept from decent schooling by such terrible legal trickery as Plessy vs. Ferguson).
But folktales also, as far as I've ever been able to tell, have their feet very firmly grounded in the past, in a historical or even mythic past. Those folktales have as much to do with the contemporary lives of kids reading then in 1930 as they do with kids reading them in 2013. Perhaps, in reading Rudine Sims Bishop, I will learn that African-American folktales have a very different existence than any of the Anglo/European folktale traditions I have some knowledge of. This could be true. But it's still a very specific tradition, a specific genre, that is distanced in several ways by its generic conventions from its audience.

So why don't we know - and we should know at least one or two token titles!  - nonwhite children's literature from before 1960 or so? W.E.B. DuBois's  Brownies magazine made efforts at providing African-American children with African-American children's stories, but can anyone name any of those authors or stories? [Answer: yes, obviously someone, probably more than one someone, can - but they have a too-specialized knowledge].

We learn/teach/are taught the Golden Age narrative of children's literature, which definitely is important and plays rather an important role in the development of the genre, and also in the dominant Anglo-American culture of the last 200+ years. Knowing Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Peter Pan is still important. But I am really flabbergasted to realize that I don't know any African-American, or Native, or Latino, writers or texts for children from before the later 20th century. I do spend, and have spent, rather a lot of time trying to know everything about the field of children's literature, but I am happy to admit I don't know everything - so it would be easy for me to say "argh, a horrid oversight on my part!"

But the fact that the Collective Genius and Knowledge of the listserv didn't have a couple of go-to authors or titles really does surprise me. Maybe it's because it's the end of the semester and folks are too busy to reply. And the responses I DID receive are definitely helpful - I don't want to dismiss them at all, because they knew more than I did. But the absence is noticeable, and notable. If you'd ask the list for, say, picture books with black child characters, you'd get heaps of replies right away saying "The Snowy Day" or "Amazing Grace" or Chris Raschka's books, or Faith Ringgold's, or any number of others.

I don't know how - or rather, I am afraid I know too well how - to understand the depressing absence of nonwhite writers and characters from the children's literary tradition. I am hoping Rudine Sims Bishop can help me out (and Michelle Abate's and Kate Capshaw's work), because I am now determined to find and include an early nonwhite (probably African-American) work of children's prose on this syllabus.
I had hoped for a nice easy-to-assemble syllabus, so I could attend to the sadly neglected dissertation, but this is too important to let go. So I'll give up a few dissertation hours to poking around the libraries and internet, and reading Sims Bishop, and seeing what kind of fiction I can find, written for and about and by the nonwhite population.

When I find those texts, I will do my best to wallpaper my tiny corner of influence with their names.

syllabus decision-making

I finally got my spring teaching assignment confirmed, a couple of weeks ago (right before thanksgiving, I think). Two sections of Introduction to Literature, each a long night class that meets once a week. This is a gift of a schedule, and I need to work it hard and rip through my dissertation. Truly.

I've learned lessons from my efforts at teaching Intro to Lit this fall. I think I approached it from a far too meta-level for the kind of students I had (mostly hard science majors, non-readers, skeptics of literary criticism). This spring, we're just going to read a whole slew of books.
Because the class only meets once a week, I have to make my choices even more carefully than usual. The once-a-week class can go fantastically well (cf fall 2009, fall 2008) or a bit draggy (cf fall 2007).

I'd been kicking around the "travel/geography" idea for awhile, and finally mentioned it to friends on facebook, who roundly approved the idea. I'm hoping this theme will help me articulate and develop some of my geography/place ideas for the dissertation, but more than that, it's a theme that allows me to include a very broad swath of texts, including some I adore.

Books I am determined to teach:

Gulliver's Travels - at least parts 1 & 4 (Lilliput and the land of the Yahoos)
Around the World in 80 Days, which I am currently reading for the first time (and giggling periodically, because I keep being reminded that my initial introduction to the text was as a very small child watching Muppet Babies, when Phileas Frogg - aka Kermit - was making a similar trip)

Neverwhere (Gaiman)
Un Lun Dun - because I want to teach China Mieville whenever I can

Mopsa the Fairy (Ingelow)
The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland...

On the Road (Kerouac! My old beloved Kerouac! I never thought I'd be teaching a Kerouac novel. Ever)

Then we reach the tentatives:
The Tempest (I really should include a play)
A Moveable Feast (not sure I can do it justice, to be frank)

some kind of science fiction - maybe a handful of short stories? - I'd like to include space travel. Bradbury's "Mars is Heaven!" could be interesting (and terrifying). I just got, from the library, Alfred Bester's The Stars My Destination, which may end up useful. I haven't started it yet; I'm working on Around the World, which is such an odd little book. It also satisfies by desire to have something that at least briefly mentions colonialist enterprises, and since there are some significant passages in both British India and non-British-controlled India, it'll work.

some kind of excerpt from Bachelard's Poetics of Space

I ought to include some poetry, but I feel so off my game when it comes to poetry. I can't think of much poetry that works with my theme, either - Eliot's Wasteland, but I KNOW I can't teach that. 


I have to remind myself not to add too much children's/YA lit, though of course that's where I'm most at home. One of the unfortunate aspects of teaching is that I'm always fighting the last war; I adapt my upcoming class based on the class I had most recently. This occasionally produces very good results, or at least interesting ones, but sometimes it backfires completely. Still, I am going forward with the assumption that my students will be skeptical of the literary merits of any book(s) written for younger readers, so I'm trying to keep a good balance.
I also need to not include Diana Wynne Jones on my syllabus, though I always want to. I've had far too many failures teaching her books (Howl's Moving Castle excepted - that almost always gets good reception), and I just can't take it anymore.  A particularly nasty student comment (on course evaluations) about Jones very nearly made me cry, and I am not going to be the one to cast pearls before swine. At least not until I recover from the experience of trying to teach The Merlin Conspiracy.
[note: I am reasonably thick-skinned about my evals. I can't please everyone, and so naturally I will have some less-than-stellar comments. I don't take it especially personally. I have never been really upset by anything in my evaluations until I read the student remark about Jones. THAT was the single most upsetting thing that has ever been written in my evaluations.]

I can't quite get excited about the new semester until I've finished the old one, and that won't happen for another week or so. Grades are due on 20 December, so until then I'll be reading drafts, answering questions from students, calculating percentages, and reading finals.

Then I can start being excited about travel/geography books.

notes on a syllabus: ADOLESCENCE

for kicks, I plan syllabi. In fact, making up courses and syllabi (all in my head, never committed to paper) is how I discovered/decided that I was interested in teaching in the first place. I got all geeked out and excited about planning how I would teach certain books, what kinds of assignments I'd create, and I realized that - though all my life I'd resisted the idea of teaching [in large part, I think, because both of my parents were teachers, and I saw firsthand the nonsense they had to put up with] - I was actually really excited by and attracted to the possibilities of teaching.

Now that I have taught for five years - a total of thirteen classes, I think, all but two of them entirely of my own design - I get to make real syllabi. At present, my future teaching opportunities while still in grad school are uncertain, so I'm kind of back to making up imaginary classes and syllabi. Which is fun.

I've been thinking seriously about an adolescence/YA syllabus - there's a course at Pitt called Representing Adolescence that I'd love to teach. So I'm jotting down some ideas here, in the event that this - or some other - YA class comes my way. Because it's "representing" adolescence, I'm thinking film, television, etc in addition to YA books.

Representing Adolescence:

My So-Called Life (selected episodes, at least 2)
King Dork by Frank Portman
Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott (?)

something from the Judy Blume oeuvre
I haven't read/seen any, but Gossip Girls, I think
Slam by Nick Hornsby (?)
I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith, maybe

what movies would work? I keep thinking of Labyrinth, because I really do think that's quite a good female-adolescence - coming-of-age story. The movie Thirteen is hugely obnoxious and problematic, and therefore pretty interesting to talk about, though painful to watch. It would be awesome to include some MTV - shows like Beavis & Butthead, or my personal favorite Daria; there are also the "Doug" sketches on the old MTV show "The State" - Doug is the rebellious teenager who has nothing to rebel against.
Catcher in the Rye seems like an obvious choice.
I really, really, really want to include at least one queer title - maybe Will Grayson, Will Grayson
I could just do representing adolescence in my childhood and throw in Heathers, or Pump up the Volume.

I wonder, too, how fantasy would or could fit in to a course on representing adolescence. I keep thinking - horrifically enough - of Disney's A Little Mermaid, which is a movie I hate, but which really insists on the teenageriness of Ariel.

I'd need to include some secondary/critical sources. G. Stanley Hall's Adolescence, of course, excerpted, but what else?? I'd LOVE to have a collection of newspaper or periodical editorials and such about Kids These Days that would cross a broad historical period.

what else?

course idea: brainstorming

It occurred to me last week that it could be awesome to put together a sort of science-fiction children's/YA lit class. Initially, i thought an all-time-travel syllabus would be cool, but then the idea of parallel worlds occurred, so I imagined a split course, half time-travel, half parallel worlds (problem: what parallel world books would I use? and how to avoid just teaching everything Diana Wynne Jones has ever written?)

Tentative booklist:

Time-Travel:
The Story of the Amulet
A Tale of Time City - Diana Wynne Jones
The time of the ghost - DWJ
A Wrinkle in Time - Madeleine L'Engle
When You Reach Me - Rebecca Stead
HP and the Prisoner of Azkaban

something like Susan Cooper's Dark Is Rising series?? where does THAT fit?

Parallel Worlds:
Golden Compass, maybe even the whole trilogy - Philip Pullman
Howl's Moving Castle?
The Merlin Conspiracy?
Narnia

I'm sure there are a zillion more titles that I;m not thinking of. It would be very interesting to poke around and see what kind of 19th-century time-travel books I could scare up (Jules Verne, maybe? HG Wells, The Time Machine, a book I haven't read - ?).

I love planning syllabi! even for imaginary courses that I'll probably never teach. Making up imaginary classes/imaginary syllabi is how I discovered/decided that I wanted to be a teacher.

choose your own adventure books

My book order for spring is almost complete, only a month late!!

I need to fill two more weeks - four classes total. the theme - a vague, broad theme - is adventure. I have books like Treasure Island, The Magic City, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Un Lun Dun, The Lightning Thief. For a surprise (even to myself) twist I have The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks.

But I need two more weeks' worth - two novels, probably. but which ones?

I could do the horrible and assign an actual Choose Your Own Adventure book. I'm not sure any of us could actually handle reading one of those, though - but then again, from a narrational/structural point of view (not to mention the reader-response point of view), it could be AWESOME.  Those are the ultimate in reader-response. I'd have to brush up on reader-response criticism, but that might be a good thing - it could help with my dissertation. Stanley Fish just waits for me, lurking in my critical theory textbooks.....

but what else?
I've kicked around The Westing Game, The 21 Balloons, Larklight, The Amulet of Samarkand. There's also Mary Poppins, or The Wind in the Willows, if I want to go canonical. I have several fairly contemporary dystopias on the list, so I won't add in anything like The Giver, and A Wrinkle in Time is just kind of a crummy irritating book after awhile, so I'd like to avoid that as well.
The Book of Three is really tempting, especially now that I know about the Mabinogi.  Or something by E.L. Konigsberg - The Mixed-Up Files, or Up From Jericho Tel.

In my tireless yet perpetually fruitless efforts to please everyone, I'm dithering way too much over these last couple of titles. I've only ever had one class - one - that went mostly cheerfully along with me on every book on the syllabus, and that was an extraordinary class that I hope I never forget (they gave me a card on the last day! who does that in college? only truly awesome students, which I had).

decisions, decisions! what two books will I pick??????

syllabus-making

as soon as i posted my blithering about not knowing what to put on my syllabus, i realized i had at least a second awesome title: I AM THE MESSENGER.

so: Un Lun Dun, and I am the Messenger.


now: build-a-theme workshop time.

what should I teach?

I have to put together my book order soon (today is the deadline, but that won't happen) for my spring semester of Childhood's Books. This may very well be my last semester of teaching at my university; I'm in my final funded year, though not (alas) in my final year of dissertation work. In light of this, I want to put together a fabulous syllabus - an especially fabulous syllabus, I should say, since I always strive for fabulosity.

But what to teach? I'm torn between teaching my favorites, willy-nilly, or putting together some kind of organized theme. This term, my theme is history (past, present, future). I've had smash hits with Laurie Halse Anderson's SPEAK, and with Rick Riordan's THE LIGHTNING THIEF. It's tempting to teach these again, because they get such a good response from the students, but then, I also want to branch out and try some things I've never taught before.

I suspect that I am placing WAY too much importance on this last syllabus; it may very well NOT be the last syllabus, and anyway, it's my sixth semester of teaching this particular course. I have a stack of well-planned syllabi for this class to draw upon, and to use for my eventual teaching portfolio.

But the problem remains: what to teach?

I would really, really like to teach China Mieville's UN LUN DUN. But other than that, I don't think I have any particular commitments to specific titles.

Syllabus making is one of the best parts of teaching, but it can also be the most stressful. And since right now, I have a pile of midterms to grade along with a conference paper to prepare, the syllabus work is exceedingly stressful.