Countering Narratives of a Muted Past with Caribbean Children's Literature

Children’s literature coming out of the Caribbean region and the Caribbean diaspora exists dynamically in today’s world. Yet more attention, particularly by academia, to stories for children rooted in the Caribbean has been a long time in coming. Alongside the wealth of cultural influence streaming from a Caribbean nexus in popular culture, across the major western hemisphere countries, i.e., Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States, there is a history of local and diasporic generations with limited access to reading stories that reflect their complex ancestry. The joyful and clever amalgam of stories by and for Caribbean residents, their descendants, and contemporary dispersed cousins’ sheds light on the region’s historical formation as a central landing space for genocide, enslavement, and imperial power. Amidst this history individuals formed families and communities that sustained life in a multitude of artful ways.

As co-editors of Caribbean Children's Literature, Volume 1 History, Pedagogy, and Publishing and Volume 2 Critical Approaches, Betsy Nies and I created a platform to further scholarly consideration of how story, language, culture, and identity are captured for readers. Exploring the diverse production of stories across languages, island and diasporic communities reflects the play and urgency of voices to counter silence about what life was, is, and means for those of us who descend from the region.

In Volume 1, History, Pedagogy, and Publishing, 15 chapters address the literary histories of children’s literature in all four language regions. In rich and radical ways, each essay is exploring the past, present, and future existence of stories that speak to the histories, decolonizing efforts, and publishing presence specific to picture books and literature for children and young adults. For example, Karen Sanderson-Cole and Barbara Lalla trace the use of Creole in children's literature since the 1950s while Geraldine Skeete explores the emergence of Creole in secondary readers in the Anglophone Caribbean. Caribbean children’s authors gather to chat about the challenges of publishing such work in the region while those of the diaspora, such as Junot Díaz, Edwidge Danticat, and Olive Senior, discuss their transition from writing for adults to writing for children.

Volume 2, Critical Approaches explores ways of interpreting texts, bringing various lenses to the forefront, such as eco-pedagogy, postcolonial theory, childhood studies, and more. The variety of genre, voice, and theme establishes how Caribbean children’s literature fills a void and resists a largely silenced conversation about life in the region and Caribbean people. For all educators, but especially those within the Caribbean, this volume invites contemplation on local contemporary and unknown stories that highlight the many facets of modern everyday life and resonate on a global level as well as reflect the local. A Translanguaging Space: Children's Literary Culture from Outside the U.S.

The role of language in the classroom is a central area for teacher contemplation. Understanding the transnational perspective of the Caribbean citizen and their diasporic relatives is a natural bridge to interrogating a translanguaging stance for how it encompasses language, culture, and identity. (García, & Kleifgen, 2020; Seltzer, & de los Ríos, C. V., 2018; Skerrett, & Omogun, L., 2020). Young readers, developing a sense of self and becoming aware of the layers within consciousness, intuitively expand their repertoire of knowledge. The Caribbean shared regional experience reflects how language evolved for people under inhumane conditions who found opportunities to build knowledge and live.

While the traumatic silence of genocide exists, there is extensive evidence of how orature and language girded people’s ability to construct new meanings through sustaining cultural legacies. People transformed in their survival and transcended language in their human experiences. Caribbean stories for and about young people rooted in the region share significant features that invite a closer understanding of distinct experiences reflecting history, language, and nuanced differences amongst island nations. In the growing diaspora communities’ educators benefit from attention to how language exists across the region and continues to evolve.

A Library Collection: A Teacher Preparation Program

One project furthering the emphasis on Caribbean children’s literature is the recent contemporary collection of picture books and chapter books at Lehman College - City University of New York. The collaborative efforts of our research team (composed of two educators in the Teacher Education program, me and Cecilia Espinosa, with our Education Librarian, Alison Lehner-Quam) focus on exploring how current critical theory shaping a pedagogical understanding of multilingual learners in a 21st century environment is reflected within the contemporary collection of Caribbean children’s literature. We presented our initial work, Exploring Contemporary Caribbean Children’s and Young Adult Literature: Implications for Culturally Responsive and Sustaining Education at the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) 2022 conference. Recognized as a Hispanic-serving institution (HSI) Lehman college teacher candidates reflect not only the Spanish-speaking Caribbean islands (Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, and Cuba) but also the English-speaking and French-speaking islands. Furthermore, the Lehman library Caribbean collection highlights future inquiry into other areas of the world. New York City teachers benefit from having a deeper understanding and affiliation with children’s ancestral roots. Evidence for centering culture when working with children via story continues to grow as a significant feature for teacher preparation programs.

For example, in Multicultural Books for PreK–Grade Three Caribbean children’s literature is integrated into the Early Childhood classroom. Addressing stories specific to a global area invites teacher educators to enact a perspective that crosses regions and models an exploratory stance towards student’s family histories. Questions such as, how has the colonial legacy within a country and/or continent impacted the use of stories in the classroom? How do teacher candidates read, connect, and consider using stories rooted in global regions within their classrooms? And who are the writers of the stories and how does the author/illustrator invite connection for teacher, student, and families? How do these stories present opportunities to build knowledge as well as language where silence was most dominant? Posing questions such as these in discussion with pre- and in-service teachers counters narratives of a muted past.

REFERENCES

Espinosa, C.; García, M.; Lehner-Quam, A. (2023). Taking up Translanguaging in a Teacher Education Program. (Eds. Silvia Melo-Pfeifer and Vander Tavarez). Tentative Title: Language and Teacher Identity. Wiley-Blackwell

Garcia, M. (2023). Caribbean Literature. In Chen, X., & Browne, S. (Eds.), Multicultural Books for PreK-grade Three. Rowman Littlefield.

García, O. & Kleifgen, J. A. (2020). Translanguaging and Literacies. Reading Research Quarterly, 55(4), 553–571. https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.286

Lehner-Quam, A., West, R. & Espinosa, C. (2020). Developing and Teaching with a Diverse Children’s Literature Collection at an Urban Public College: What Teacher Education Students Know and Ways Their Knowledge Can Grow about Diverse Books, Behavioral & Social Sciences Librarian, 36 (4), pp. 171-208.

Rankine, Y. (2023). Reconciling with the Lack of Diverse Literature as an Afro-Caribbean American. In P. Sullivan, H. B. Tinberg & S. D. Blau (Eds.), Deep reading, deep learning : Deep reading volume 2. Peter Lang.

Seltzer, & de los Ríos, C. V. (2018). Translating Theory to Practice: Exploring Teachers’ Raciolinguistic Literacies in Secondary English Classrooms. English Education, 51(1), 49–79. https://doi.org/10.58680/ee201829833

Skerrett, & Omogun, L. (2020). When Racial, Transnational, and Immigrant Identities, Literacies, and Languages Meet: Black Youth of Caribbean Origin Speak. Teachers College Record (1970), 122(13), 1–24. https://doi.org/10.1177/016146812012201302

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Melissa L. García Vega, PhD teaches at the City University of New York (CUNY) - Lehman College. Her research interests examine Children’s literature with emphasis on the Caribbean region, multilingual learners, and the global context. She earned a doctoral degree in Caribbean literature from the University of Puerto Rico. Melissa has taught in kindergarten through college classrooms in New York as well as in Puerto Rico. She coedited a two-volume anthology on Caribbean children’s literature with the University of Mississippi Press. Her most recent project expands on children’s literature within the College library for pre- and in-service teacher use.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Betsy Nies serves as a professor of English at the University of North Florida, Jacksonville, where she teaches children's, young adult, and US ethnic literatures. She has published widely in Caribbean children's literature, evidenced in the forthcoming anthology Caribbean Children's Literature, vols. I and II (University of Mississippi Press) and publications within Children's Literature in Education, Amaltea. Revista de mitocrítica, and other locations.