In "The Bluest Eye," Toni Morrison presents a community in which a racist ideology is internalized. The sufferers of racial abuse in this community both endure and resist in a complex inverse interrelationship between the two actions. This contradiction of the internalization and the insurrection of racial abuse is one of the crucial…

In theorizing how we should pedagogically approach African American literature, especially in courses for undergraduates, I argue that we have to move away from questions of what was or even what is African American literature and, instead, find ways to teach African American literature in both its historical contexts--artistic and political--and…

The migration of blacks in North America through slavery became united. The population of blacks passed down a tradition of artist through art to native born citizens. The art tradition involved telling stories to each generation in black families. The black culture elevated by tradition created hope to determine their personal freedom to escape…

Reading and reflecting upon ethnically unfamiliar literature can provide opportunities for teacher candidates to critically examine assumptions of self and other relative to racial, cultural, and linguistic identities. However, ethnically unfamiliar literatures can be difficult for readers to understand and appreciate due to the aesthetics they…

Coupling Royster's (2000) conceptual framework of "zamani" with Rosenblatt's (1978) reader response theory, the researcher explores the ways African American women's writings supported, nurtured, and "mentored" the writings of adolescent girls. Findings show that the mentor texts helped in generating ideas for writing, thinking…

In this article, the author talks about her past experiences and how she immersed herself in African-American literature. While teaching a journalism class in an after-school program at the Decatur Clearpool Beacon School in Brooklyn's Bed-Stuy section, the author realized that most of her students had no sense of African-American history beyond a…

The migration of blacks in North America through slavery became united. The population of blacks passed down a tradition of artist through art to native born citizens. The art tradition involved telling stories to each generation in black families. The black culture elevated by tradition created hope to determine their personal freedom to escape…

This review analyzes three new texts about the history and meaning of children's literature: Leonard Marcus's "Minders of Make-Believe: Idealists, Entrepreneurs, and the Shaping of American Children's Literature"; Perry Nodelman's "The Hidden Adult: Defining Children's Literature"; and Rudine Sims Bishop's "Free Within Ourselves: The Development…

The purpose of this study was to examine how the social practices of African American families--with children in grades K-2--changed as a result of participating in a family literacy program utilizing African American children's literature. The families were exposed, through a series of workshops, to an abundance of children's literature…

The purpose of this study is to analyze the behavior of a character, Celie, in a movie, 'The Color Purple," through the lens of two adult learning theorists to determine the relationships the character has with each theory. The development and portrayal of characters in movies can be explained and understood by the analysis of adult learning…

The use of fiction and autobiography in social science course work has been shown to enhance students' learning experience. Using the novel PUSH, by Sapphire, we designed a curriculum supplement for the social work course, human behavior and the social environment (HBSE) that encourages students to integrate course content in an innovative way and…

This article features the acceptance speech given by the author at the NCTE Elementary Section Get-Together on November 15, 2007, where she received the 2007 Outstanding Educator in the English Language Arts Award. In this speech, the author shares some of the observations she has made about the African American children's literature published in…

The purpose of this article is to assert that there are classic African American children's books and to identify a sampling of them. The author presents multiple definitions of the term classic based on the responses of children's literature experts and relevant scholarship. Next, the manner in which data were collected and analyzed in regard to…

In 1983, when the author began graduate school at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville as the only black student in the Graduate English School, it offered no graduate-level African-American Literature course. Today an undergraduate student at the University of Virginia can major in African-American and African Studies and take courses…

This article examines the utilization of racial humor in Christopher Paul Curtis' novel, "The Watsons Go To Birmingham--1963." The theoretical perspectives that inform the analysis include critical race theory and humor theory. The results of the analysis reveal that the use of humor in this book is influenced to a significant degree by race and…