While obtaining my B.A. in English at Fontbonne University, I took a course on African-American literature from Reconstruction to the present. I was introduced to Charles W. Chesnutt, James Weldon Johnson and “The Autobiography of Malcolm X.” These literary works excited me, but it also made me sad that I was not introduced to this literature at a younger age.
At the time, my child was enrolled at Ritenour Middle School. Instead of discussing Frederick Douglass or W.E.B Dubois, my son’s class read “The Diary of Anne Frank.” My frustration at the lack of African-American literature and history being taught at the middle-school level prompted me to share my experience with my child.
We are both amazed at where our journey of discovery has taken us, reading writers such as Hallie Q. Brown, Olivia Ward Bush, Josephine Brown, Pauline E. Hopkins and a host of others.
Reading slave narratives by Frederick Douglas and Harriet Jacobs inspired me to create my own slave narrative for my senior thesis. My narrative centered on a dialogue between a mother passing a folktale from her mother to her daughter, then the daughter sharing her knowledge with her class at school. In that tale, a fictional female slave hero visits plantation after plantation, saving slaves from the hands of vicious slaveholders.
This experience has inspired me to continue learning about African-American history and providing inspiration to my son, so maybe he will become an inspiration to his friends.
“From the time children enter school, most African-American children read literature that seldom offers messages about them, their past or their future,” B.R. Heflin and M. A. Barksdale-Ladd write.
“All too often books used in primary classrooms contain too few African-American characters, or they include characters who are African American in appearance only. Many of these stories say little about African-American culture or they present only the history of African Americans as slaves without including any. In short, today’s African American children often cannot find themselves in the literature they are given to read.”
I can only hope that reading with my child and sharing my experience with others will spark more discussions about the importance of incorporating African-American literature in the classroom at the elementary and middle-school levels.
Erica Van Buren is a former St. Louis American intern and contributing writer to the paper.
