Racial Abstraction and Species Difference
Anthropomorphic Animals in "Multicultural" Children's Literature
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3400440 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Leslie Bow (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2019 |
| Volume | 91 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 323-356 |
| Publication date | 2019-06-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | American Literature (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0002-9831 • E-ISSN: 1527-2117 |
| Publisher | Duke University Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1215/00029831-7529167 |
| OpenAlex | W2945082676 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 7 |
| References cited | 21 |
This essay explores anthropomorphism in contemporary children's literature, books in which animals model racialized behaviors in order to promote racial resilience and "teach tolerance." Unveiling the unintended consequences of invoking species difference as a form of racial abstraction, the essay contextualizes "multicultural" picture books that enlist animal surrogates within the "here and now" innovations of Lucy Sprague Mitchell's Bank Street Writers Lab and the animal stories of Margaret Wise Brown. In keeping with studies in developmental psychology that explain how children acquire and unlearn biases, the work engages two arenas: books that imagine the adoptive family as cross-species alliance and those that depict biodiversity as a visual metaphor for multiculturalism. In looking at the adult's ventriloquism of imaginary figures for the imagined child, the essay explores the imperfect correspondence between pedagogic aims and fantastical form, the fissures that arise in turning to nonhuman figures to express adult anxieties over racial difference. Anthropomorphic animals reconcile the paradox of diversity at the millennium: envisioning democratic inclusion without invoking the divisiveness of US racial history
Aesthetics · Agonism · Alliance · Art · Democracy · Diversity (politics) · Metaphor · Multiculturalism · Pedagogy · Psychoanalysis · Sociology · The Imaginary · Anthropology · Children's Rights and Participation · Folklore, Mythology, and Literature Studies · Gender Studies · History · Law · Psychology · Themes in Literature Analysis
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The Uses of Enchantment. The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales
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Introduction
American Indian Stereotypes in the World of Children
On Acquiring Social Categories
The Developmental Psychology of Racial Prejudice
| Unique citing works | 7 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1,75 |
| Citation span | 2022 - 2026 (5) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 7 |