Children's Literature of the Harlem Renaissance

by Katharine Capshaw Smith

Overview

The New Negro Renaissance, the period associated with the flowering of the arts in Harlem, inaugurated a tradition of African American children's literature, for the movement's central writers made youth both their subject and audience. W.E.B. Du Bois, Carter G. Woodson, Langston Hughes, Alice Dunbar-Nelson, and other Harlem Renaissance figures took an impassioned interest in the literary models offered to children, believing that the "New Negro" would ultimately arise from black youth. As a result, African American children's literature became a crucial medium through which a disparate community forged bonds of cultural, economic, and aesthetic solidarity. This book explores the period's vigorous exchange about the nature and identity of black childhood and uncovers the networks of African American philosophers, community activists, schoolteachers, and literary artists who worked together to transmit black history and culture to the next generation.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780253110923
Publisher:	Indiana University Press
Publication date:	07/05/2004
Series:	Blacks in the Diaspora
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	368
File size:	4 MB

About the Author

Katharine Capshaw Smith is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Connecticut, where she teaches children's literature and African American literature. Her work has appeared in Children's Literature; Southern Quarterly; The Lion and the Unicorn; Melus: Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States; Ariel; and other publications.

Table of Contents

	Acknowledgments	ix
	Introduction	xiii
1.	The Emblematic Black Child: Du Bois's Crisis Publications	1
2.	Creating the Past, Present, and Future: New Negro Children's Drama	53
3.	The Legacy of the South: Revisiting the Plantation Tradition	107
4.	The Peacemakers: Carter G. Woodson's Circle	163
5.	The Aesthetics of Black Children's Literature: Arna Bontemps and Langston Hughes	229
	Epilogue	273
	Notes	277
	Bibliography	307
	Index	327