The Emerging Self: Young-Adult and Classic Novels of the Black Experience

Abstract

During the last two decades, fiction written for young adults-formerly a taboo-constrained, white, upper-middle-class enclave-has come of age. Young-adult fiction now probes societal problems with frankness and often with grace. No authors have done more to bring about this change than three African American writers who are leaders in the field: Alice Childress, Rosa Guy, and Walter Dean Myers. Their reflections on growing up black in America offer thematic connections to the work of African American novelists writing earlier in this century: Nella Larsen and Zora Neale Hurston, who were part of the Harlem Renaissance, and Ann Petry, who wrote just after World War II. Cultural roots of the differences between white and black attitudes toward both legitimate and spurious middle-class values are easy to trace. Propelled by the availability of frontier land and high wages, most white immigrants came to America hoping to achieve upward mobility and material success. Espousing the belief that hard work was justly rewarded, they embraced a lifestyle in which competitive relationships, built upon a cash nexus were the norm. Obviously, African Americans were brought to America as slaves. Until Eman ipation, their survival depended upon their ability to n urish a sense of community, partly throug a rich folk culture and fervent religious observance. After Emancipation they faced formidable barriers to economic opportunity. As Langs on Hughes writes in Puzzled,