Katharine Capshaw and Anna M Duane (Editors)

University Of Minnesota Press, 2017

Innovative essays that challenge us to imagine African American children’s literature during the slavery and reconstruction eras
Who Writes for Black Children? unlocks a rich archive of largely overlooked literature read by black children. From poetry written by a slave for a plantation school to joyful “death biographies” of African Americans in the antebellum North to literature penned by African American children themselves, this volume presents compelling new definitions of both African American literature and children’s literature.

Was any literature written specifically for black children living before 1900 in the Western Hemisphere? By posing this question, Capshaw and Duane force a reckoning with a gap in children’s literature studies that is predicated on the assumption that slavery invalidated a space for black children to consume literature.

— V. A. Murrenus Pilmaier, University of Wisconsin-Sheboygan