Keynote Speech
Zora Neale Hurston for All: Anti-Racist Children’s Literature
In early twentieth-century America, much progressive children’s literature flew under the radar because it wasn’t taken seriously as an artistic or political enterprise. No more: progressive children’s literature is taken very seriously indeed by champions and antagonists alike, occupying center stage in the so-called culture wars. The #WeNeedDiverseBooks and #OwnVoices movements have prioritized diversity in our literature and its authors. Right-wing children’s literature, meanwhile, continues to be produced, and many U.S. states have lately installed book bans and imposed restrictions on gay- and trans-affirmative literature, speech, and life. This conference, of course, emphasizes the many ways – admirable and not so much – in which children’s literature is used and appropriated (and produced) by adults. My presentation will focus on how African American authors in particular seek not only to promote diversity but to spotlight and teach anti-racism in our politically volatile moment. While I will speak more generally on this topic, I’ll focus on the anti-racist afterlife of writer and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960), now considered one of the most significant American authors.
Hurston did not consider herself a writer for children. But she wrote “for kids” in a broader and more generous sense, not unlike other writers for whom childhood was a principal theme. Recognizing that commitment, contemporary storytellers present Hurston not only as an exemplary subject for children’s literature but as a kind of proxy author. This posthumous remaking has taken several stages so far. First, around the time that Hurston’s classic Their Eyes became entrenched in high school and college literature courses – making it a YA adjacent book — children’s biographies of Hurston began to appear, in both picture book form and in occasionally illustrated titles for older readers. A second and overlapping stage involved picture book adaptations of folktales collected and retold by Hurston. These picturebooks are credited to Hurston if with “assistance” by contemporary writers and with approval from the Hurston Trust. A more recent venture in Hurston translation into children’s literature – and the beginning of a firmly anti-racist emphasis — is the Zora and Me middle-grade trilogy, written by African American authors Victoria Bond and T. R. Simon. Bond and Simon collaborated on the first volume, Zora and Me (2010), then took turns with the next two, Simon writing Zora & Me: The Cursed Ground (2018) and Bond Zora & Me: The Summoner (2020) (all published by Candlewick Press, a children’s publisher). Told from the perspective of Zora’s friend Carrie Brown, the trilogy concentrates on Hurston’s early life in Eatonville while developing a larger historical context for both Hurston and the town. The Zora and Me books do not claim Hurston as author, but they do present her as an author in the making, emphasizing her storytelling powers and linking such to African American survival strategies.
More recently still, Black history professor and anti-racist activist Ibram X. Kendi has undertaken a series of Hurston adaptation projects, collaborating with Amistad Press on six children’s books, four illustrated books for beginning readers and two middle-grade novels. Kendi is author of many notable books including Antiracist Baby, Goodnight Racism, How to Be an Anti-Racist and Stamped from the Beginning. In a 2022 interview with Publishers Weekly, Kendi explains that he first encountered Their Eyes Were Watching God in school and came to admire Hurston’s other work over time. “I also became a father and started reading children’s books to my daughter. Having a daughter, particularly a Black girl, and wanting her to read Zora and Black folklore is what initially propelled me to want to do this. I want to bring Zora’s work to children everywhere.” His recently released Barracoon adapts Hurston’s neglected and posthumously published title by the same name, a title profiling the last human “cargo” of the middle passage. His Hurston projects are part of an anti-racist program aimed at adult and child readers both. For Kendi, Hurston is a figure not merely appropriate but absolutely necessary for people to encounter. I share this perspective, while emphasizing how anti-racism work now prioritizes and relies on children’s books as tools for collective awareness and empowerment.
Speaker
Kenneth Kidd is Professor of English and Affiliate Professor, Center for Women’s Studies and Gender Research at the University of Florida. He works in Anglophone children’s literature studies and is especially interested in the field’s intersections with other cultural projects, such as philosophy, psychology, and critical theory. His most recent book looks at children’s literature’s engagement with and presence inside theory and philosophy and is called Theory for Beginners: Children’s Literature as Critical Thought (Fordham, 2020). It’s a sequel of sorts to his second book, Freud in Oz (Minnesota, 2011), about the intersections of children’s literature and psychoanalysis. He is also interested in questions of gender and sexuality in and around children’s literature. His first book, Making American Boys (Minnesota, 2004), explores literary and cultural programs of “boyology” in relation to stories of boys raised by various animals (what he calls the “feral tale”). He has also coedited two essay collections dealing with queer childhood and/or children’s literature: Over the Rainbow (Michigan, 2004), and Queer as Camp: Essays in Summer, Style, and Sexuality (Fordham, 2019). He and Derritt also co-edited Alt Kid Lit: What Children’s Literature Might Be (Mississippi, 2024), which continues his interest in expanding what registers as children’s literature. With UF colleague Sid Dobrin he also coedited the first essay collection on children’s literature and ecocriticism, Wild Things (Wayne State, 2004), and with Joseph T. Thomas, Jr. he coedited Prizing Children’s Literature: The Cultural Politics of Children’s Book Awards (Routledge, 2017). Kenneth is currently working on a book about Florida children’s literature.
Professor Kidd serves on a number of editorial boards and is especially active with the Children’s Literature Association. He is coeditor of the third volume of the Cambridge History of Children’s Literature, now in preparation, and with Elizabeth Marshall he co-edits the Children’s Literature and Culture series at Routledge, the oldest-running monograph series in the field. Professor Kidd teaches undergraduate courses in children’s and young adult literature, including a new course on Florida children’s literature, as well as graduate seminars such as “Into the Archive,” “Comparative Children’s Literature” and “Disney and Its Discontents.” He is an Affiliate Professor with the Center for Women’s Studies and Gender Research and also serves as Director of UF’s Center for the Study of Children’s Literature & Culture. He was named a UF Research Foundation Professor for 2024-2027.
