Insiders, Outsiders, and the Question of Authenticity: Who Shall Write for African American Children?

Abstract

Let Portmans go to Ireland, but as you know nothing of Manners there, you had better not go with them. You will be in danger of giving false impressions. Stick to Bath & Foresters. There you will be quite at home. (Jane Austen [from a letter to Austen's niece, who had sent her manuscript of a novel], qtd. in Mercer 307) This romance was sketched out during a residence of considerable length in Italy, and has been rewritten and prepared for press in England. The author proposed to himself merely to write a fanciful story, evolving a thoughtful moral, and did not purpose attempting a portraiture of Italian manners and character. He has lived too long abroad not to be aware that a foreigner seldom acquires that knowledge of a country, at once flexible and profound, which may justify him in endeavoring to idealize its traits. Italy, as site of his romance, was chiefly valuable to him as affording a sort of poetic or fairy precinct.... (Nathaniel Hawthorne, Preface to The Marble Faun vi) My themes are universal. And because black people are people I know, and part of group that I am, that is my center, so to speak, so my characters are black. Most of time.... But it's very difficult when you're a black writer to write outside of black experience. People don't allow it; critics won't allow it. If I would do a book that didn't have blacks, people would say, Oh, what is Virginia Hamilton doing? Yet a white writer can write about anything. (Virginia Hamilton, qtd. in Rochman 1021) This is a popular Japanese folktale and tells story of a devoted pair of wild ducks. The illustrations in this beautiful book are subtle and suggestive but also an education in dress, hairstyles, hierarchical levels of society, homes, customs and, not least, in eighteenth-century Japanese art. (I have been told that there are inaccuracies in representations; cummerbunds of ladies are wrong width and upper-class ladies sport hair styles of courtesans. And Japanese never wear shoes in house. This doesn't lessen my bonding with this book and, indeed, makes me want to find out more.) (Judith Graham [commenting on The Tale of Mandarin Ducks, retold by Katherine Paterson and illustrated by Leo and Diane Dillon] 24) One central concern of scholars, literary historians, and critics these days is matter of authenticity, especially authenticity of cross-cultural and multicultural stories, and ensuing conflict or question, Who will produce literature of parallel cultures? An author of character's own particular culture - or anyone? And for those who feel it doesn't matter (that anyone who can tell a good story should do so), we must ask, What makes a story good? Replicating reality to fullest? Getting facts and feelings right? Suppressing or distorting reality to make us think and feel differently? (Giving us new images to think with - and about?) But good for whom? Writers who want or need freedom of expression? Publishers who want story to sell? Readers who want to find themselves in a book? Readers who want to find others in a book? And which readers? Those closest to author's own reality? Or those with different background experiences? Can a really story be good if it does not derive its material from traditions (the memories, beliefs, preoccupations, and concerns) of an author whose cultural origins are shared by those of story's characters? Jane Austen, with her concern for social realism, did not think so. And remark she made about the little bit (two inches wide) of ivory on which I work with so fine a brush (qtd. in Tanner 1) has now become legendary. Nathaniel Hawthorne agreed in principle, and that is why he decided to make his story The Marble Faun, set in Italy, a fantasy and why he took great pains to sidestep a realistic portrait of his Italian characters. Virginia Hamilton protests fact that she does not have liberty of white authors, who either ignore Austen's advice or follow Hawthorne's example. …