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Racial Identification and Audience in Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry and the Watsons Go to Birmingham—1963

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Abstract

Multiethnic children’s literature addresses multiple audiences, providing different reading experiences and benefits for each. Using critical race theory as an interpretive tool, this article examines how two African American historical fiction novels, Mildred Taylor’s Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry and Christopher Paul Curtis’s The Watsons Go to Birmingham—1963, frame anti-racist identifications for readers of all races. It argues that these identifications are key elements in the novels’ rhetorical strategies for engaging readers and opposing racism. Both novels portray strong African American families with whom both black and nonblack readers can identify and present African American perspectives on race, but they differ in how directly they approach racism and how they frame the identification of white readers. The conclusion offers implications of analyzing race and audience when teaching multiethnic literature.

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Notes

  1. See Perry Nodelman’s (2008) The Hidden Adult for one discussion of the complexities of audience in mainstream children’s literature. Multiethnic children’s literature, I argue, provides another layering of implied audiences affecting the nature of the literature.

  2. In their introductory essay in Stories Matter: The Complexity of Cultural Authenticity in Children’s Literature, a collection of 22 essays representing a diverse range of perspectives on the issues involved with cultural authenticity in books for children, Dana L. Fox and Kathy G. Short note: “Cultural authenticity in children’s literature is one of those contentious issues that seems to resurface continuously, always eliciting strong emotions and a wide range of perspectives. Authors, illustrators, editors, publishers, educators, librarians, and scholars all have different points of view about authenticity that they each feel strongly about based on their own sociocultural experiences and philosophical views” (2003, p. 2).

  3. While Taylor recognizes “children, both Black and white” as her ideal audience (1977, p. 26), Curtis explicitly denies targeting his writing at a particular audience or thinking (during the creation process) about how his stories will affect particular groups (Morgan, 2002, p. 212). Curtis does, however, recognize his multi-racial audience, acknowledging that he senses, after writing, different ways in which black readers will react compared to non-black readers (Morgan, 2002, p. 211). He also expresses hopes that his writing “touches all kids in a special way, but particularly African-American kids” (Curtis, 2002). Regardless of authorial intentions, readers are likely to relate to the text in ways influenced, among other factors, by race.

  4. Critical race theory can be used to support arguments in favor of multiethnic education and literature that focuses on issues of power and oppression involving race as well as establishing common ground among different groups, rather than celebrating a “melting pot” assimilationist approach. It can also be used to oppose multicultural education that “offers no radical change in the current order” (Ladson-Billings and Tate IV, 1995).

  5. Educational benefits also accrue when children of parallel cultures read multiethnic literature (Bishop, 1997; Johnson, 1990, p. 8).

  6. According to The African-American Book Buyers Study (2001), African Americans’ annual expenditures on books ranged from $272 million to $356 million dollars for the years 1995–2000 (p. 3-2). A survey of active African American book buyers indicated that 11% of the (adult) respondents had purchased a children’s book for their own child in the previous 3 months, and 32% had purchased a children’s book as a gift in the three-month period (Book Industry Study Group, 2001, pp. 1–21). These purchasing rates for children’s books are particularly notable because only 11% of the respondents had children under the age of 12 in their home (p. 2-7).

  7. Critical race theory’s emphasis on the ordinariness of racism is especially relevant in contemporary society to counterbalance the common cultural story that bad racist acts occurred in the past but are rare aberrations today. However, Taylor shows the normalization of racism in her setting as, for example, most black teachers are grateful to receive worn, discarded books. The genre of RTHMC simultaneously makes its racism easier to see and understand and easier for readers to distance from themselves. Rogers and Christian (2007) include historicizing racism as one strategy by which children’s books dealing with race from a white perspective can distance the reader from understanding the continuing damages racism inflicts on people of nonwhite color today. Brooks and Hampton (2005), however, argue that RTHMC provides a safe space for learning about racism in all its complexity and “facilitates a means by which the past can become a part of the present in the imaginations of [Taylor’s] readers” (p. 97).

  8. Many whites, such as the Simms, were also locked into the exploitative system but still considered themselves superior to all blacks, reaping social and legal benefits for their race. Thus the oppressed were divided. According to critical race theory, the psychic benefits working class whites derive from feelings of superiority converge with the material benefits derived by elite whites, providing incentives to perpetuate racism (Delgado and Stefancic, 2001, p. 7).

  9. Johnson notes that literature for Black youth tends to be “instructive and pedagogical at its foundations,” partially as a corrective to stereotyping (2). She defends this didacticism, arguing, “it is the responsibility of African American adults to instruct our young people about our collective histories as well as to guide them in their development as individuals, while also initiating them into a culture, with all that entails. I maintain that ‘message’ and ‘art’ can and do work together to accomplish these ends. ‘Message’ and ‘art’ constitute a whole in the form of children’s literature and in Black children’s literature in particular” (1990, p. 2). RTHMC exemplifies Johnson’s argument.

  10. The Road to Memphis (Taylor, 1990), a Logan novel set 8 years after RTHMC, vindicates both David and Jeremy: in a moment of white racial bonding and status-building, Jeremy participates in a game of “coon-hunting” in which whites “tree” a young black man (pp. 70–78). He later redeems himself and fulfills his role of scapegoat; he assists in the escape of a friend of the Logans who after much provocation attacked white men, including a relative of Jeremy’s, and consequently is expelled from his family.

  11. Analysis of the naïve narrative perspective and its role in creating identification between implied reader and text was developed more fully in my 2009 conference paper (Barker, 2009).

  12. I am unaware of any challenges issued against The Watsons Go to Birmingham—1963, though Ballentine and Hill mention the possibility of school boards censoring it (2000, p. 18).

  13. Wanda Brooks comments on the devaluing of children’s literature written by people of parallel cultures (2009, p. 37). I wonder if this devaluation arises in part from misapplication of standards derived from a different literary tradition to these multiethnic literary texts.

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Acknowledgments

My sincere thanks go to the Southeastern Oklahoma State University’s Applied and Organized Research Fund for the Southeastern Faculty Research Grant which supported essential work on this manuscript. Thanks also to two anonymous reviewers for Children’s Literature in Education and to Dr. Margaret Cotter-Lynch whose constructive readings of earlier versions of the manuscript greatly improved it.

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  1. English, Humanities, and Languages Department, Southeastern Oklahoma State University, 1405 N. 4th Avenue, Durant, OK, 74701, USA

    Jani L. Barker

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Correspondence to Jani L. Barker.

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Jani L. Barker is an Assistant Professor of English at Southeastern Oklahoma State University, where she teaches children’s literature.

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Barker, J.L. Racial Identification and Audience in Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry and the Watsons Go to Birmingham—1963 . Child Lit Educ 41, 118–145 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10583-010-9101-4

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