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Brings together scholars and practitioners to present an ethnic studies framework for studying and teaching youth literature.
For decades, youth literature has been reckoning with its role in systemic racism and oppression. In this landmark edited volume, Marilisa Jiménez García and Sonia Alejandra Rodríguez assemble a cadre of well-known women of color scholars and practitioners to make a case for ethnic studies as a path for pursuing racial justice in the field. Ethnic studies, they argue, demands that we go beyond seeing race, ethnicity, culture, and diversity as questions of identity and difference. Instead, it shows us how marginalized positionalities create epistemologies that shape our understanding of age, craft, genre, and knowledge production. Multidisciplinary and intersectional in its approach, Ethnic Studies and Youth Literature analyzes US imperialism through the lens of youth literature and vice versa, shedding light on the roots of our current culture wars and curriculum battles.
"This bold and necessary collection brings together scholars, educators, and writers who challenge assumptions and ideas about youth literature, calling for a deeper, more intentional engagement with ethnic studies frameworks … Highly recommended." — School Library Journal
"Jiménez García, Rodríguez, and their contributors take the field of youth literature to task, pointing out the ways it has been complicit in perpetuating systemic oppression and white supremacy. While scholars of children's and young adult literature will certainly benefit from the volume, the editors also take care to introduce youth literature to scholars in ethnic studies." — Isabel Millán, author of Coloring into Existence: Queer of Color Worldmaking in Children's Literature
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction: Walking Between the Lines
Marilisa Jiménez García and Sonia Alejandra Rodríguez
Opening Poem: My Curriculum
Alissa Alina Flores
Section 1: Youth as Intellectuals and Storytellers
1. Out of Empire's Shadow: Confronting US Imperialism through Randy Ribay's The Patron Saints of Nothing
Lara Saguisag
2. Becoming a Girl: Girlhood, Child Marriage, and Widowhood in Kashmira Sheth's Keeping Corner
Blessy Sharon Samjose
3. "Let Me Tell You a Story": Healing, Environmental Justice, and Resistance in Mark Oshiro's Each of Us a Desert
Sonia Alejandra Rodríguez
Section 2: Intersectionality and Counternarratives
4. Representations of Asian American Girlhood in Contemporary Young Adult Literature
Jung E. Kim
5. In the Spirit: Womanist Notions of Blackness, Indigeneity, Gender, and Dis/ability in Children's Literature
Reanae McNeal
6. The Power of Story, Images, and Policy in Native Studies: An Interview with Traci Sorell and Alia Jones
Marilisa Jiménez García and Sonia Alejandra Rodríguez
Section 3: Community Frameworks
7. African American Children's Literature: The First 100 Years (reprint)
Violet J. Harris
8. Critical Indigenous Literacies: Selecting and Using Children's Books about Indigenous Peoples (reprint)
Debbie Reese
9. The Mirror, the Matrix, the Movement: Intellectual Legacies of the Council on Interracial Books for Children
Marilisa Jiménez García
Coda: Reflections on Struggle, Freedom, and Storytelling
Marilisa Jiménez García and Sonia Alejandra Rodríguez
List of Contributors
Index