Introduction: "This Quest for Ourselves": Essays on African and Caribbean Children's Literature

In using the phrase "this quest for ourselves," Aimé Césaire was referring to a discovery of self that enabled him to "read Martinique," "to return to [his] own identity."¹ For post-independence writers from Africa and the Caribbean, literary self-representation offers profound rewards. The reclamation of history, recuperation of oral culture, and redirection of politics are all at the heart of modern writings from Africa and the Black Diaspora. But in negotiating self-representation, writers confront the aftershocks of their dispossession. School systems, publishing programs, and even the minds of subjugated people sometimes retain a residue of the colonial mindset. What has become increasingly apparent, however, is writers' awareness of the power of children's culture, whether in the schoolhouse or at home, to shape identity. The rise of a culturally redemptive children's literature from Africa and the Caribbean signals a new approach to reconstituting Black identity, one that comments unreservedly on neocolonialism and the challenges it presents to Black experience. Children's literature may well be one of the best sites for exposing colonial structures of power, since cultural bias has been authorized so plainly through the school system.

The authors studied by our group of essayists know that their art acts as a "countervoice" to traditional modes of cultural imperialism. Their stories contravene biased schoolbooks, refute the stigmatization of the folk voice, and undercut white versions of Black experience. In Jochen Petzold's discussion of two novelists—Karen Press and Martin Hall—we see how these writers illumine a perspective disallowed under the apartheid regime, a perspective that uncovers bits of South Africa's "hidden history." (As apartheid began to unravel in the late 1980s, Heinemann South Africa began a series for children and young adults; Press and Hall participated.) Petzold's overall goal is to "show that the texts of the 'Hidden Histories' series deconstruct some of the 'certainties' that were the cornerstones of apartheid," certainties that were legitimized through biased textbooks and children's books in general. Importantly, Petzold uncovers the writers' awareness of the constructedness of history. In destabilizing the conviction that historical truths are absolute, writers are empowered not only to offer alternate versions of history, but also to acknowledge that history may not be an entirely satisfactory source of cultural identity. In Hall's novel, characters themselves interpret historical artifacts quite differently, revealing Hall's perceptions about both the potential and limitations involved in scrutinizing historical data. Reclaiming history is a complicated process, Petzold indicates, one that bears risks as well as rewards, but one that (through storytelling) can offer deep cultural sustenance for the reader.

In Mahoumbah Klobah's essay about Ghanaian storyteller, J. O. de Graft Hanson, we see how this novelist connects Ghanaian history with the African aesthetic. The protagonist in his novel, The Golden Oware Counters (1991), is displaced by warfare, but placed with people who can shed light on the history and values he needs to know well—that he must master if he is to fulfill his future role as the chief ruler of his country. Klobah highlights both the values and stylistic interests included in de Graft Hanson's aesthetic. History, legend, a collective spirit, a plausible delineation of character—these are among the elements that de Graft Hanson has orchestrated in producing a lucid and appealing tale for the young. Klobah's essay takes the reader behind the novel's implicit question—"How do Africans learn the cultural and sociopolitical norms of their society?" He shows how religion, folk art, class disparity, generational difference, and rites of passage all play a role. Through the essayist's elucidation of the bonding of families, the preservation of collective knowledge, and numerous additional background details, we glimpse the Africa that de Graft Hanson narrates.

In the three Caribbean-based articles, we see the close ties between the African continent and African Diaspora, as well as the multiplicity and dynamism of Caribbean identity. Cynthia James recounts the way orature in Trinidad and Jamaica has the African trickster, Anansi, at its very core. Yet changing times...