African American Children’s Literature

Abstract

African American children’s literature includes a broad array of writing for Black children in the United States. The genre necessarily crosscuts the “children’s literature” and “African American literature” genres. Although Black children have always read literature not intended for them, and scholars have rightly addressed the negative effects of racist depictions on Black child readers, definitions of this genre have most often prioritized writing for children written by African American authors. African American children’s literature is a broad and rich field, with a history originating as early as the 18th century; it includes Black writing addressing children and literature of the present, engaging forms from oral and folkloric traditions to printed books and ranging across a variety of literary genres. Emerging alongside the dominant prioritization of white children and white authors in mainstream publishing, writers of literature for Black children have worked against structural difficulties that continue to leave African American depictions and authors underrepresented in proportion to the country’s Black population. African American children’s literature has also necessarily contended with the preponderance of anti-Black racism in US popular culture, including in white children’s literature. Thus, African American children’s literature has often addressed issues of racial representation and racism in addition to (and often intertwined with) the wide variety of other topics included in this œuvre.