“Restorying” the Past: Toni Morrison’s Remember, a Black-and-White Primer for American Children

To commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of Brown v. Board, the landmark Supreme Court decision declaring segregation in schools unconstitutional, Toni Morrison wrote what her publisher, Houghton Mifflin, called her first historical work for children. A blend of archival photographs, exposition, and creative narration, Remember: The Journey to School Integration has garnered scant critical attention, several reviewers dismissing it with thinly veiled disdain. However, when this deceptively simple book is read alongside The Bluest Eye and using Ebony Thomas and Amy Stornaiuolo’s work on how young readers, via various forms of restorying, respond to texts and media that exclude or marginalize them, Morrison’s artistic agenda becomes clear. In Remember Morrison assembles a black-and-white primer for American children, restorying in spectacular fashion a widely circulated 1940 basal reader from the Alice & Jerry series titled Anything Can Happen into a living history that promotes critical racial literacy, civic responsibility, and cross-racial solidarity.