What Matters the Color of the Tiger's Stripes?: The Significance of Bibliographies by Ethnic Identification

Long before winning the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature, Wole Soyinka had proven himself a master of language. A venerable teacher, scholar, writer and political activist, the Nigerian writer had inspired and provoked an astonishing variety of people with his sensitive understanding of human nature and his talent for the apt phrase. One particular comment, uttered some twenty years ago, has achieved legendary status. The story goes like this. During the sixties, there was a conference of Black writers and artists from all over the world gathered in Africa to debate and to confer. As was often the case during those days, one of the conversations turned to a discussion of Negritude, the Black Arts movement begun in France some twenty-five years earlier by Leopold Senghor, the poet who became President of Senegal, Aime Cesaire, poet and eventually mayor of Fort-de-France, Martinique, and Leon Damas, playwright and later Assemblyman from French Guyana. In response to a vehement discussion about the necessity of writers publicly proclaiming their ethnic identifications and the attention which they should give to explaining and examining their cultural heritages in their literature, Soyinka cryptically noted that "A tiger does not proclaim his tigritude—he pounces."

While at first glance that phrase may seem antithetical to any attempt to justify a bibliography of literature based upon the racial identification of its writers, it is apropos. Soyinka was not suggesting that ethnicity is an inappropriate subject for literary exploration. Nor was he implying that racial considerations are unimportant in the creation or evaluation of art. His own novels and plays speak strongly against racism. He has written self-consciously African works. One of his favorite themes is the exploration of cultural tradition and integrity as they apply to contemporary social and political situations. And, as a socially committed artist, so strongly has he spoken that more than once he has been arrested and jailed for his advocacies.

Soyinka's evocation of the tiger and its tigritude was an expression of his keen awareness that art and act are inseparable. But it was also a demonstration of his disgust with those who would substitute the sterile exercise of labeling or restricting literature for the rich and productive pleasures of experiencing it. A tiger's survival depends upon its ability to hunt and to kill and not upon its proclamations of intent, its rationalization of method, or the color of its stripes. Likewise a writer must write as authentically and artistically as individual talent and experience permit. The quality of writing is not determined by gender, race, or politics. Any activity which distracts tigers, or writers, from their primary responsibility not only hinders their effectiveness but may cause their extinction.

Most lovers of children's literature would prefer to assume that the same applies to them. Like Soyinka's tigers, we would rather pounce than pontificate. Like Sheila Egoff, we would maintain that "children's literature, like any other literature, is simply good writing" (vi). And from this it might therefore appear logical that an author's color or culture should have about as much relevance to our adoptions of texts or recommended readings as the hues or the fonts upon their dustjackets. Yet, for teachers and scholars of children's literature, this is not the case. Our responsibilities exceed our personal aesthetics. As professionals we must recognize the validity of arguments such as Julius Lester's that, "Good literature for my children is literature that includes them and the way they live. It does not exclude them by omitting people of their color, thereby giving them the impression that they are less valued" (225). We must agree with Rudine Sims that "Educators who choose books for children cannot separate literary evaluations from social responsibility. The literature we choose helps to socialize our children and to transmit to them our values" (Shadow vii).

As a legacy of the civil rights movement and, later, the feminist movement, we are now aware that white men were not the only people who could—and did—contribute to the American literary tradition...