Evaluating, Selecting, & Using Materials on Africa

Brenda Randolph & Lesego Malepe

Appalachia is a creature of the urban imagination. The folk culture, the depressed area, the romantic wilderness, the Appalachia of fiction, journalism, and public policy, have for more than a century been created … by the economic opportunism, political creativity, or passing fancy of urban elites” (1)

Allen Batteau

That was Then

What about Now

Recent books recycle old stereotypes

Backwardness, dysfunctional

“Primitive/barbaric stereotypes.

“White man’s graveyard

Exotic & strange

“I plan to live for a year among the Masai tribesmen of Africa, who grow seven feet tall and drink blood from the necks of cows.” (22)

“Merely a collection of western metaphors, created and shaped to confirm stereotypes of Africa that

America already has.” (Hawk)

Western metaphors

Pre-existing Ideology

“Every stereotype emerges in the wake of a pre-existing ideology which deforms it, appropriates it and naturalizes it….the stereotype sends its message __ which is automatically absorbed by the viewer/reader, and which replaces history”

(Diawara, 9)

“Many students filter accurate information through their inaccurate stereotypes, thus making my teaching less effective than I would like.” (Keim, xi).

African Images in Juvenile Literature: Commentaries on Neocolonialist Fiction

Yulisa Amadu MaddyDonnarae MacCann

“…Books for children instill [a damaged image of Africa] at the earliest stage of life – the time when it can become deeply embedded in consciousness.” (Maddy and MacCann, 4).

“The books themselves are one part of the problem, but the larger issue concerns the professional network that…. showers them with honors and thereby promotes their wide circulation (3)

Yulisa Maddy

Africa Access

At Africa Access our primary goal is to improve the selection and use of accurate, balanced materials on Africa in schools, public libraries, and other institutions that serve children and young adults.

http://www.AfricaAccessReview.org

Reviews written by African Studies Scholars

Let’s go Online to the Africa Access website

Africa Access Review Online

Searchable Database

Guidelines for Evaluating Multicultural* Fiction [adapted for fiction set in Africa]

Evaluation Tools: Fiction Organizer

Africana Book Buddies Club

Bookmarks

Certificates

Reader’s Review

Award Books 2011

Reading Research Activities

Teaching Links

Africa Access Newsletter

The End

Brenda Randolph 2012

Children’s Africana Book Awards

Over 64 Winners and Honor Books

CABA Winners

Catherine Stock Isaac Olaleye

Galimoto Bikes for RentIfeoma Onyefulu

Ikenna goes to Nigeria and Here Comes Our Bride

Penda & Baba Wague

I Lost my Tooth in Africa

E.B. Lewis

My Rows & Piles of Coins

Yohannes Gebregeorgis

Silly Mammo

Nicole Tadgell

Fatuma’s New Cloth

Provides peer-reviewed articles on children’s and young adult literature published about Africa.

• The Africa Scene

• Literatures of the Diaspora

• Children’s Africana Book Award

Evaluation Tools: Subject Organizer