Leiden University Student Repository

Batho, Nick (2015)

Overcoming the Cultural Deficit: Black Power Youth Literature

Master thesis | North American Studies (MA)

The main focus of this thesis is how children’s books were used as a tool within the Black Power Movement to overcome the cultural deficit. After examining the state of children’s literature prior to the movement the Black Power Era’s influence on children’s literature is addressed. The children’s books written by Julius Lester To Be a Slave (1968) and Black Folk Tales (1969) are then the key texts with which to examine how children’s books reflected the cultural changes that were developed during the Movement. The books provide a more nuanced and less overtly political view of black identity that is aimed at children. In conjunction with other materials, such as Ebony Jr., I demonstrate that the Black Power Movement enabled the production of various media such as magazines and children’s books that were not as extreme as the vision of Amiri Baraka’s view of the Black Arts Movement but nevertheless important in the struggle against the cultural deficit. Though these images and texts...Show moreThe main focus of this thesis is how children’s books were used as a tool within the Black Power Movement to overcome the cultural deficit. After examining the state of children’s literature prior to the movement the Black Power Era’s influence on children’s literature is addressed. The children’s books written by Julius Lester To Be a Slave (1968) and Black Folk Tales (1969) are then the key texts with which to examine how children’s books reflected the cultural changes that were developed during the Movement. The books provide a more nuanced and less overtly political view of black identity that is aimed at children. In conjunction with other materials, such as Ebony Jr., I demonstrate that the Black Power Movement enabled the production of various media such as magazines and children’s books that were not as extreme as the vision of Amiri Baraka’s view of the Black Arts Movement but nevertheless important in the struggle against the cultural deficit. Though these images and texts are less recognizable they were part of an effort that built on work prior to the Civil Rights movement but struggled in the shadow of the militaristic and provocative cultural expressions of the Black Power movement.Show less

Black Power

Children

Literature

Julius Lester

Civil Rights

Author

Batho, Nick

Faculty

Faculty of Humanities

Specialisation

North American Studies

Supervisors

Fairclough, Adam

ECTS Credits

20

Language

en