Children's Biographies of African American Women

Sara C. Vanderhaagen

Description

A study of how rhetoric has shaped the life stories of African American role models in children's literature

In Children's Biographies of African American Women: Rhetoric, Public Memory, and Agency Sara C. VanderHaagen examines how these biographies encourage young readers to think about themselves as agents in a public world. Specifically VanderHaagen illustrates how these works use traditional means to serve progressive ends and thereby examines the rhetorical power of biography in shaping identity and promoting public action.

Drawing on scholarship in rhetoric, memory studies, and children's literature, VanderHaagen presents rhetorical analyses of biographies of three African American women—poet Phillis Wheatley, activist Sojourner Truth, and educator-turned-politician Shirley Chisholm—published in the United States during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. VanderHaagen begins by analyzing how biographical sketches in books for black children published during the 1920s represent Wheatley and Truth. The study then shifts to books published between 1949 and 2015. VanderHaagen uses a concept adapted from philosopher Paul Ricoeur—the idea of the "agential spiral"—to chart the ways that biographies have used rhetoric to shape the life stories of Wheatley, Truth, and Chisholm.

By bringing a critical, rhetorical perspective to the study of biographies for children, this book advances the understanding of how lives of the past are used persuasively to shape identity and encourage action in the contemporary public world. VanderHaagen contributes to the study of rhetoric and African American children's literature and refocuses the field of memory studies on children's biographies, a significant but often-overlooked genre through which public memories first take shape.

Sujets

• Literary Criticism
• Women
• América
• To Be a Slave
• Biographical novel
• Biography
• Children's literature criticism
• Black pride
• African-American literature
• Susan Brownmiller
• Feminist theory
• Black Arts Movement
• New Woman
• Woman
• Semantics
• Rhetoric
• Black people
• African American
• The Women
• Susan B. Anthony
• American
• Black Power
• Margaret Fuller
• National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
• Black
• Suffragette

Informations

• Publié par: University of South Carolina Press
• Date de parution: 15 novembre 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781611179163
• Langue: English

Extrait

C HILDREN S B IOGRAPHIES of A FRICAN A MERICAN W OMEN
C HILDREN S B IOGRAPHIES of
A FRICAN A MERICAN W OMEN
R HETORIC , P UBLIC M EMORY , and A GENCY
S ARA C. V ANDER H AAGEN

T HE U NIVERSITY OF S OUTH C AROLINA P RESS
2018 University of South Carolina
Published by the University of South Carolina Press Columbia, South Carolina 29208
www.sc.edu/uscpress
27 26 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data can be found at http://catalog.loc.gov/ .
ISBN 978-1-61117-915-6 (cloth)
ISBN 978-1-61117-916-3 (ebook)
For Chris
C ONTENTS
A CKNOWLEDGMENTS

C HAPTER O NE
L OCATING M EMORIES and A GENTS IN C HILDREN S B IOGRAPHIES
C HAPTER T WO
P UBLIC M EMORY as a R HETORICAL H ERMENEUTIC
C HAPTER T HREE
A W ORLD of I NSPIRATION
Biographical Sketches in Early African American Children s Literature
C HAPTER F OUR
P REFIGURATION
The Agent Placed in History
C HAPTER F IVE
C ONFIGURATION
The Agent Writing History
C HAPTER S IX
R EFIGURATION AND A PPROPRIATION :
The Agent Reading History
C HAPTER S EVEN
S ANITIZE and S IMPLIFY
Beyond Contemporary Cynicism

N OTES
B IBLIOGRAPHY
I NDEX
A CKNOWLEDGMENTS
My experience of researching, writing, and revising this book leads me heartily to agree with this statement from the Book of Ecclesiastes: Two are better than one, for they have a good return for their work. I am glad to have this opportunity to thank all of those others who have helped me see a good return on my work.
First, I must acknowledge the institutions that supported this project, including Northwestern University and specifically Northwestern s Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities. Other institutional support included that which I received as a DeKruyter Graduate Scholar in Communication from Calvin College and as a Harvey Fellow from the Mustard Seed Foundation. An Untenured, Tenure-Track Assistant Professor Summer Research Support Award from the Greenspun College of Urban Affairs at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas was likewise helpful.
I am also grateful for the support of Gerard Hauser, editor of Philosophy and Rhetoric , and Valeria Fabj, former editor of Women s Studies in Communication . Sections of chapters 1 , 4 , 5 , and 6 appeared in my essay The Agential Spiral : Reading Public Memory through Paul Ricoeur, Philosophy and Rhetoric 46:2 (2013): 182-206. This article is used by permission of the Pennsylvania State University Press. Sections of chapters 4 - 6 about Sojourner Truth appeared in my essay Practical Truths: Black Feminist Agency and Public Memory in Biographies for Children in Women s Studies in Communication , which is reprinted by permission of the Organization for Research on Women and Communication (ORWAC). Reviewers at both journals enabled me considerably to strengthen my early ideas.
Many helpful readers have given their attention to this project. Faculty members at Northwestern University challenged and encouraged me as I developed the earliest version. Angela Ray has been a superb mentor. She supplied incisive criticism, offered compassionate counsel, and provided encouragement, each in its turn. She is an exemplary scholar and teacher and a valued friend. Keith Topper s contributions enhanced my discussions of agency and memory and my application of Ricoeur. Bob Hariman encouraged me to reflect on the advantages and disadvantages of my reading strategy and, perhaps unwittingly, promoted my interest in philosophical hermeneutics (even though the field was, as he put it, currently out of fashion ). Darlene Clark Hine read and applauded my early efforts at reading children s biographies about Sojourner Truth, and her expertise greatly enriched the project. I also thank Dilip Gaonkar for introducing me to Ricoeur and for offering unsolicited but appreciated insights about my individual scholarly identity. I am also grateful to the conference respondents, reviewers, and editors who read parts or all of the manuscript. Chuck Morris provided encouraging feedback on an early version of chapter 3 . Leah Ceccarelli, Beverly Lyon Clark, Jessica Enoch, and the two anonymous reviewers at the University of South Carolina Press supplied astute, substantive feedback on the manuscript at various stages.
As a scholar with extroverted tendencies, I have depended upon the support and companionship of my colleagues and students. This project, in its infancy, was compassionately engaged by the members of a writing/support group: Tim Barouch, Jon Edwards, Rana Husseini, and Randy Iden. Since then, this project has also benefited from the constructive critique, smart conversation, sage advice, entertaining diversions, and laughter of Randall Bush, Donovan Conley, Matt deTar, Erika Engstrom, Jenny Guthrie, Cindy Koenig Richards, Kimberly Alecia Singletary, Patrick Wade, and all of my incomparable colleagues at UNLV. I also thank my UNLV mentors, David Henry and Denise Tillery, for their wisdom and friendship. My curiosity about and enthusiasm for the material in this book were invigorated by my students at UNLV, who asked me challenging questions about rhetoric, public memory, and African American history and taught me by sharing their perspectives.
While completing this work, I was nourished by a network of family and friends that spreads from Michigan to Chicago to Las Vegas. The following individuals have blessed me with gracious friendship, counsel and cheer, commiseration, and unflagging support: Jessica Bratt Carle; Katie DeVries; Kyla, Sean, Cora, and Emmet Ebels-Duggan; Becky Gelinas; Abram and Kristin Van Engen; Marissa, Matt, and Noah Metevelis; and Laura Verkaik. My families by marriage, birth, and adoption have also greatly influenced this work, including my mother-and father-in-law, Ginny and Rich Verkaik; my birthmother, Phoebe Dobrowski; and my extended birthfamily.
But this project and all that it represents would never have been possible without my parents, Ric and Julie VanderHaagen; my sister, Laura Gustafson, along with Sam, Bruce, Neil, and Luke; my daughter, Phoebe; and my husband, Chris Verkaik. My parents modeled lives of meaningful work, instilled in me a love of reading, and endured my overactive imagination and penchant for argument. My sister distracted me with arts and crafts and asked about my work even when she wasn t interested. My daughter, Phoebe-who arrived in the middle of this project-reminds me daily about the best way to approach the world and its people: with empathy, curiosity, and imagination.
Most of all, I thank and celebrate Chris. While I was writing the first version of this project, he worked outside the home so that I could pursue my research and writing without financial burden. Since the birth of our daughter, in 2013, he has worked inside the home, taking care of our family so that I could, again, be free to finish this book, among other things. He has been a compassionate listener, patient caretaker, worthy sparring partner, and strong companion. It is to Chris that I dedicate this book.
C HAPTER O NE

L OCATING M EMORIES and A GENTS IN C HILDREN S B IOGRAPHIES
She had come to appreciate her own time and place, her very own role in the chain of events stretching from past to present.
Catherine Clinton, Phillis s Big Test
This is how the Aufkl rer s own life gets its significance, by his or her taking a place, playing a role in this chain of progress.
Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self
In her historical novel Chains , the 2008 recipient of the Scott O Dell Prize for historical fiction for children and adolescents, Laurie Halse Anderson, gave voice to Isabel, a thirteen-year-old girl enslaved in New York City during the American colonists struggle for independence. 1 The end of the novel finds Isabel in increasingly dire circumstances, having come under the ownership of a cruel mistress. This woman has sent Isabel s mentally unstable younger sister Ruth to a family plantation in Charleston, South Carolina, deceptively telling Isabel that Ruth has been sold away. Possibilities for Isabel s being sold to a more benevolent master evaporate. As the outlook grows bleaker, Isabel s remembery (as the narrator calls it) recalls a story imparted by her late mother: that of her contemporary, the poet and enslaved woman Phillis Wheatley. As Isabel s desire for freedom from bondage grows, she considers how she might achieve that goal: Another picture hung itself in my mind, the poetry book in the stationer s shop. The one I d been afraid to read. Miss Phillis Wheatley went free when her master released her. Twas on account of her fame, Momma said. Master Wheatley looked the fool for keeping a poetical genius enslaved in his household. 2
Isabel claims she was afraid to read Wheatley because she feared that such reading about this exemplar from the past might provoke her to pursue her own freedom. In the text just previous to the quoted passage, Isabel thinks about her family, especially her sister Ruth, whom Isabel has been led to believe has been sold. She says to herself that it didn t help to ponder things that were forever gone. It only made a body restless and fill up with bees all wanting to sting something. 3 Remembering people from the past makes Isabel want to do something-to lash out, whether at the system itself or at those people who kept the system running. After reflecting bitterly on her situation and her separation from her family, Isabel turns to Wheatley. She makes this shift as if someone else had put the image in her head-the picture of Wheatley s book had just hung itself in her mind. This recollection is followed by one of other