An Interview with Rudine Sims Bishop

Throughout her career as a professor of education at The Ohio State University, Rudine Sims Bishop contributed significantly to the scholarship dealing with African American children’s literature. Her seminal work, Shadow and Substance: Afro-American Experience in Contemporary Children’s Literature (NCTE, 1982), identified and addressed key issues that have become touchstones in the study of multicultural literature. Although retired from Ohio State since 2002, she has not retired from researching and writing about the subject. Her latest book is her most ambitious work yet. Free within Ourselves: The Development of African American Children’s Literature (Heinemann, 2007) covers the broad expanse of literature for children written and illustrated by African Americans from the nineteenth century to the present day. Her research into early church publications has inspired her to write a children’s biography of Daniel Alexander Payne, a bishop in the African Methodist Episcopal church who pushed for an educated ministry, and who was the first African American president of an American university (Wilberforce University). It will be published by Just Us books in the fall of 2008.

KATHLEEN T. HORNING: Your book is dedicated to the memory of Virginia Hamilton and Tom Feelings. Can you tell us why?

RUDINE SIMS BISHOP: I did it because of their contributions to the field. With their deaths there is just such a void, and I wanted to honor them and the work they did. I’m an admirer of their work and I knew them both personally, as well, so that was on my heart to do. Their books will live on for a long time.

KTH: You’ve published a lot over the years about specific aspects of African American children’s literature. Is there anything new or surprising that you learned from taking a step back and looking at the subject with a wide lens?

RSB: I’m not sure I came across many surprises, but I did find material that was new to me. I knew there were nineteenth-century church publications, but I hadn’t seen them. I was able to find copies of the Christian Recorder and to see the specific columns that were focused on children. Learning about nineteenth-century magazines that were both about and for children, and that were addressed specifically to children, was enlightening for me, as was the Janet Duitsman Cornelius book on the pursuit of literacy among enslaved people.

KTH: Did you find any connections between the nineteenth-century literature and what’s being published today?

RSB: Yes. As Lucille Clifton says, “Lines connect in thin ways that last and last.” When I reread the Thomas L. Weber study on education in the slave quarters, which is a classic research piece, I was intrigued by how some of the cultural themes he identified still show up in African American children’s literature today — for example, the importance of family and the importance of education. Those are still such important themes in African American children’s literature. There are those lines that connect from way back when up until now.

KTH: And moving ahead to early twentieth-century magazines, The Brownie’s Book, published by The Crisis from 1920–21, seemed far ahead of its time in the world of children’s literature. What is particularly significant about it in terms of African American children’s literature?

RSB: Through this publication W. E. B. DuBois laid the foundation for modern African American children’s literature. He articulated the need for such a literature and he showed through example the direction that this literature might take. It was what I like to call teachy but not preachy. He outlined in his goals for the magazine some of the same kinds of purposes expressed by later twentieth-century writers that have to do with supporting Black children’s positive self-image and with helping them learn how to resolve problems that come as a result of racism. He also advocated for informing readers about Black history and Black heroes and Black heritage. And he advocated for literary artistry as well. Those concerns are still part of the underlying philosophical foundation for contemporary African American literature.

KTH: There have been talented writers and artists in every generation, and yet few African American authors and illustrators were published in the first half of the century. One notable exception was Arna Bontemps. Do you have any theories about why he was able to break through when so few others could?

RSB: Well, first, there was his great talent. Talent will out, although, as you point out, he certainly wasn’t the only talented writer. I think, too, that the success of his first children’s book, Popo and Fifina, which he co-wrote with Langston Hughes, led to other successes. That book stayed on the Macmillan list for quite a long while and it was very well reviewed, as I recall. Ann T. Eaton in the New York Times Book Review praised it as the kind of book poets should always write. There was also his versatility. Many of his books were firsts in contemporary African American children’s literature. He wrote the first historical fiction with Chariot in the Sky [1951] and he published the first urban novel with Sad-Faced Boy [1937]. He produced the first anthology of African American poetry that was specifically aimed at children, Golden Slippers [1941]. And then there was his surrealistic story, Lonesome Boy [1955], which was unique. In 1949, his book The Story of the Negro was cited as a Newbery Honor book, and that helped a lot, as well. But by that time, he had already published quite a bit.

Among the Harlem Renaissance male writers, he was the one who was married and had children. I think that was a great incentive for him to write for children. In part, that was why he focused on children’s literature and made that a goal of his, where his contemporaries may have been more focused on writing for adults.

KTH: Do you think his writing has stood the test of time?

RSB: Oh, yes. I think Lonesome Boy is timeless, as is his poetry anthology. Chariot in the Sky is good historical fiction. Sad-Faced Boy is more of a period piece. The Story of the Negro — obviously, it goes only so far chronologically, but for the time that it covers, it’s very good. He was a very talented writer. He was one of the people who helped develop the quality of African American children’s literature and made it clear that it was really good literature.

KTH: One of the most interesting periods in the history of African American literature was the 1960s and early 1970s, when so many new authors and illustrators were being published for the first time. How was this period in children’s books influenced by the Black Arts Movement?

RSB: People associated with this movement articulated many philosophical ideas that were either underlying or compatible with the ideas of those who were writing for children at the time, for example, the idea that Black is beautiful and that Africa is a source of pride. And there were writers who embraced those ideas and who made them a part of their own books. You see it in Lucille Clifton’s Black BCs and her other books as well. Nikki Giovanni’s Ego-Tripping was actually a compilation of poems pulled from her adult work that were accessible to kids. Tom Feelings readily embraced the ideas of the Black Arts Movement and produced some really significant children’s books. So it had a big impact, some of which is difficult to trace because it coincided with ideas that were out there, and the people who were inspired by them didn’t necessarily see themselves as part of the Black Arts Movement.

KTH: What kind of impact did the Council on Interracial Books for Children have on publishing in the 1960s?

RSB: There were two main impacts. In spite of the controversy that was generated, I think the Coucil helped to legitimize the examination of racism, sexism, and those kinds of negative isms in children’s books. They made people at least consider the fact that
simply looking at the plot, the themes, and the characters was not enough. One needed to look at the cultural and social context from which literature flowed. And to know that it was legitimate to ask about issues such as racism and sexism. The other impact, particularly, I think, on African American literature, was the contest that they sponsored. It started as a contest for Negro writers, as it
was called at the time, and it eventually expanded to include other parallel-culture groups. Out of that contest came the first books of Walter Dean Myers, Mildred Taylor, and Sharon Bell Mathis.

KTH: Do you think they would have found their way into children’s books without the CIBC?

RSB: I think it’s likely that if those writers had submitted their work to publishers on their own, their talent would have been recognized. But the Council still has to be given credit for calling publishers’ attention to these talented writers. And where would children’s literature be today without Walter Dean Myers and Mildred Taylor?

KTH: Speaking of Walter Dean Myers, he was among the five authors you named as “image-makers” in your groundbreaking 1982 book Shadow and Substance, along with Lucille Clifton, Virginia Hamilton, Sharon Bell Mathis, and Eloise Greenfield. Who would you name as image-makers today?

RSB: I hesitate to name names because I will miss people who should be named. But I’d think about it in terms of two generations. I don’t mean generations necessarily in terms of age level but in terms of when they began writing. Of the five Shadow and Substance image-makers, Eloise, Virginia, and Walter still have to be considered image-makers in today’s children’s literature. They’ve carried on over the past forty-plus years. In the second generation, there are certainly many people, but I will name two: Angela Johnson and Jacqueline Woodson. And then I think with contemporary books, we also have to look at illustrators. There are so many new and good ones. I think you have to look at Jerry Pinkney as an image-maker and others of his generation, as well. But I’d also include the newer illustrators, such as Bryan Collier, Kadir Nelson, James Ransome, and E. B. Lewis. Again, I hesitate to name names, but those are just some of the people we need to think of as today’s image-makers.

KTH: We’re also seeing a significant number of second-generation writers and illustrators in African American children’s literature, artists and writers whose parents are artists and writers.

RSB: That’s a very interesting phenomenon. It’s wonderful to see Christopher Myers and Jaime Adoff and Javaka Steptoe producing books for children. And, obviously, there’s the Pinkney family, where you’ve got Jerry and Gloria Jean Pinkney, and then the next generation, Brian and Andrea Davis Pinkney, and Myles and Sandra. And, if you consider the grandchildren who are modeling for the illustrations, you’ve got three generations! That is certainly the first African American family that has made children’s literature their family business. I guess I’m back to saying that there are so many image-makers, that it’s hard to name just a few.

KTH: You talk in your book about the controversy that erupted when a naive white teacher shared Carolivia Herron’s book Nappy Hair with her mostly Black kindergarten class. Why did that book touch such a nerve with so many African American adults, while bell hooks’s Happy to Be Nappy did not?

RSB: Part of the problem with Nappy Hair is that the copy the teacher shared with her students was photocopied from the original. The teacher probably did not take into account that the black-and-white pictures she showed the class were not going to come across as well as the original. Beyond that, I think there was also a difference in illustration styles. Illustrator Joe Cepeda may have demonstrated some naiveté, as well, not realizing how people might react to his illustrations. In Chris Raschka’s art, people may not have seen the same kind of relationship to what they thought of as negative stereotypes in the Cepeda illustrations. Also, bell hooks was very clear about being happy to be nappy. Herron’s book deals with the fact that they couldn’t straighten the hair, while hooks suggests that it doesn’t need to be straightened — it’s happy to be just the way it is. That may have made a difference.

KTH: I was surprised to read in your book that the overwhelming majority of African American poetry for children has been produced by just three women: Lucille Clifton, Eloise Greenfield, and Nikki Grimes. Can you talk a little bit about what is distinctive about each one?

RSB: I think they’re actually more alike than different. What all three of them are about is what Lucille called “authenticating the world of Black children.” Through poetry, they’re expressing themselves in the voices of Black children. They’re making their ordinary world extraordinary in some way by making it sound like it is worthy of being written about and talked about in poetic form.

KTH: You frequently mention the purposefulness of African American children’s literature throughout history. Can you give us a few examples of what you mean? Do you see any evidence of that today?

RSB: One of the things I wanted to do with this book was to look at what African American writers had to say about their writing and what it was they wanted to do with their writing. So many of them talked about filling a void, that is, “When I was a child, I never saw myself reflected in children’s books . . . ” or “When I was looking for books for my own children, I couldn’t find books that reflected African American children and their lives.” That’s one aspect of purposefulness. Another thing many of them talked about was counteracting negative images, messages, and themes. So there are books like Shades of Black that talk about the variety in skin color and hair texture and how wonderful that is. We have books like Something Beautiful, which says in the end, “You are beautiful.” Sewn throughout the fiction are threads of African American history, mentions of African American heroes, and references to African American music, so that there’s a whole idea of making sure that Black children have a sense of the culture in which they live. It’s that notion again of being teachy but not preachy, of giving information and trying to empower them without preaching at them.

KTH: How does that differ from didacticism?

RSB: It may not, actually. The negative view of didacticism is that the message overwhelms the story and so it becomes something that is less artistic. But a lot of children’s literature has an element of didacticism, in that it really is trying to teach, in a way, but to avoid sermonizing. I think that Black writers are unabashed about saying, “Yes, we do want to get across some ideas here and we want to do it while telling a good story and we don’t want to hammer it into people’s heads”; the literature is purposeful but not necessarily didactic in the negative sense.

KTH: And yet so much current African American children’s literature is tied to history and heritage. For every more-universal story (such as Patricia McKissack’s Tippy Lemmey, for instance), there are many more novels and picture books featuring an iconic African American figure or set against the background of the civil rights movement or describing an escape from slavery . . .

RSB: Well, I argue in my book that African American children’s literature grew in part out of a sense of necessity, a sense that African American history and heritage were being omitted from children’s literature and textbooks, and a sense that children — all American children, but especially Black children — need to learn the story of African Americans’ struggle on the journey across what Virginia Hamilton called the American hopescape. That struggle — against slavery, for civil rights, for recognition of accomplishments and contributions — has been central to African American history and life, so it’s not surprising that it is prominent in the literature. It’s what helps to make that body of literature distinctive.

I also think Black writers look to tell the stories that they believe they can tell best. And that often leads to family history and cultural heritage. For a long time, it was difficult for Black writers to get published if they wrote about topics that were not related to African American life and history. I’m not sure how much that is changing.

KTH: In that regard, how have African American authors managed to tell the truth about painful aspects of Black history without damaging children’s self-esteem? Take, for example, fiction about slavery.

RSB: It is difficult. Part of the reason that reading about slavery has been so painful for Black children is that there is a stigma attached to having ancestors who were slaves. What the writers try to do is to destigmatize that ancestry by saying, “These were people who survived. These were people who were resilient. These were people who were creative. These were people who struggled for liberation in whatever way they could. These were people who were subversive. These were people you should be proud of because they used every resource that they had to liberate themselves, and if they didn’t do it physically by escaping, they did it psychologically.” For young people, what the writers do is to humanize the enslaved people, by writing not only about the despair, but about their whole lives, which included love and included joy. They had to have something other than despair; otherwise they wouldn’t have had the will to survive. Another way to destigmatize that history is to place the responsibility for slavery on the shoulders of the enslavers. People weren’t responsible for their own enslavement. And it’s not as if they were simply passive victims who waited around until Massa got around to freeing them, either.

KTH: In your book, you talk about the great strides that have been made in African American literature over the past century. Do you think there have been similar strides made in the reviewing or criticism of African American literature?

RSB: Generally speaking, I don’t get a sense that the reviewing is better in that regard, although I think some of it is. I think there are many reviewers today that look at African American books in the larger context of American children’s literature and review the books just as they would review anything else. Either they are not aware or they don’t think it’s important to look at the context out of which the literature comes. On the other hand, there are some people who’ve read enough African American children’s literature or enough of the scholarship so that they are aware of the cultural or historical context and are able to take that context into consideration in their reviews.

KTH: There was no John Steptoe New Illustrator award given this year. Do African American illustrators have a harder time breaking into the field because there are so few African American picture books being published?

RSB: Well, I’d be guessing about whether and why African American illustrators have a hard time breaking into the field, but your question raises some interesting issues. For one thing, unless things have changed in the last few years, quite a few “African American picture books” are not illustrated by African American artists. That’s one factor.

For another, some would argue that if the reverse were true — if more African American illustrators were invited to illustrate picture books by/about non-African Americans — opportunity for Black artists would increase. Some of that has happened — for example with Floyd Cooper and James Ransome. And some artists, such as Jerry Pinkney, have chosen to rewrite or retell and illustrate some stories out of other cultural traditions. Perhaps the question should not be just whether there are enough African American illustrators to illustrate African American picture books, but whether there are enough, period. I think there’s “room for many-a-more.”

KTH: If you could change one thing about U.S. children’s book publishing for the twenty-first century of African American children’s literature, what would it be?

RSB: It would be to increase the quantity, the availability, and the marketing of books by African American writers and artists. We have perennially been underrepresented in the field, and that underrepresentation continues.

Kathleen T. Horning is the director of the Cooperative Children’s Book Center in Madison, Wisconsin, a past president of ALSC, and the author of From Cover to Cover: Evaluating and Reviewing Children’s Books (HarperCollins).