I am currently taking Eng. 349 which is an African American Literature class. Last Wednesday both my Eng. 349 class and my TE 448 classes tied in well together. Martins article titled "Ain't I fine" referenced one of the books that I am reading for my Eng. 349 class. This topic that I have been studying, looking at, and reading about is how black writers had to include a white persons written "statement of authentication" at the beginning of their writing in order to appeal to more people and have a broader audience. The book that Martin refers to is Incidents in the Like of a Slave Girl where Harriet Jacobs included a "statement of authentication" at the beginning of her book so that her Northern white audience would read and take her work seriously. Therefore, black writers had to censor their work, because they didn't want to offend their white reader, however still wanting to preserve black culture. After learning this from our reading and our lectures in Eng. 349 I was amazed to read that this same thing is happening in some black children's picture books.
Martin explains how "the same dual audience awareness exists in some black children's picture books, and I believe this to be true only of those books written by black children's authors." I think its crazy how even in more recent times black authors had to face this idea of dual audience awareness. One way that black authors speak directly to their black readers is through using black modes of discourse within children's narratives (Martin). By using this tactic black author are able to sometimes go over the heads of white and children readers.
If anyone has anything to add or comments to make about this subject I would love to hear more!
2 comments:
Kelly, I find this to be extremely interesting. It is hard to imagine that African American authors had to pretty much have authentication from a white person in the beginning of their books in order to have a wider audience. This is the first time I have ever heard of this authentication. I think it is clever that African Americans started using their own discourse to hide what they were actually trying to say so that they could still be published. I think it is cool that you can relate two of your classes together becuase that usually makes the information more appealing as well.
Kelly- This is also very interesting to me. I think the statement of authentication would be like how some books have another author write about the book in the begining, such as a foward. I did not know that black authors had to do this in order for people to read their books. I know that I usually don't read that kind of stuff before the book because I just like to read the book. It is sad that blacks had to put that in the beginning of the book in order to have people take them seriously. I did not know this had to be done in picture books as well. It makes a little bit more sense to do this in a novel (but not much), but it makes even less sense to have to put a statement of authentication in a picture book sense they are so short. I hope we have come a ways from this and I hope we can continue to be even more accepting as the years go on.
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