A Centennial Celebration of The Brownies' Book

Dianne Johnson-Feelings, Jonda C. McNair

• Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781496841230
• eBook ISBN: 9781496841254
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Contributions by Jani L. Barker, Rudine Sims Bishop, Julia S. Charles-Linen, Paige Gray, Dianne Johnson-Feelings, Jonda C. McNair, Sara C. VanderHaagen, and Michelle Taylor Watts The Brownies' Book occupies a special place in the history of African American children's literature. Informally the children's counterpart to the NAACP's The Crisis magazine, it was one of the first periodicals created primarily for Black youth. Several of the objectives the creators delineated in 1919 when announcing the arrival of the publication—"To make them familiar with the history and achievements of the Negro race" and "To make colored children realize that being 'colored' is a beautiful, normal thing"—still resonate with contemporary creators, readers, and scholars of African American children's literature. The meticulously researched essays in A Centennial Celebration of "The Brownies' Book" get to the heart of The Brownies' Book "project" using critical approaches both varied and illuminating. Contributors to the volume explore the underappreciated role of Jessie Redmon Fauset in creating The Brownies' Book and in the cultural life of Black America; describe the young people who immersed themselves in the pages of the periodical; focus on the role of Black heroes and heroines; address The Brownies' Book in the context of critical literacy theory; and place The Brownies' Book within the context of Black futurity and justice. Bookending the essays are, reprinted in full, the first and last issues of the magazine. A Centennial Celebration of "The Brownies' Book" illuminates the many ways in which the magazine—simultaneously beautiful, complicated, problematic, and inspiring—remains worthy of attention well into this century.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Facsimile of the January 1920 issue of The Brownies’ Book
• Chapter 1. The Blind Maze of Thought: Jessie Redmon Fauset, The Brownies’ Book, and the Measure of a Movement
• Chapter 2. Black Heroes and “The Jury”: The Brownies’ Book Biographies as Counter-Memories for Black Children
• Chapter 3. “My Soul Calls for Larger Things”: Voice, Vision, and Justice in Children’s Letters to the Editor
• Chapter 4. “Let Us Make the World Know That We Are Living”: The Brownies’ Book, African American Newspapers, and Black Childhood Identity
• Chapter 5. Mildred D. Taylor’s Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry: A Worthy Successor to The Brownies’ Book
• Facsimile of the December 1921 issue of The Brownies’ Book
• Contributors
• Index