{"id":3563,"date":"2009-12-02T21:08:40","date_gmt":"2009-12-02T21:08:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=3563"},"modified":"2009-12-02T21:10:54","modified_gmt":"2009-12-02T21:10:54","slug":"why-are-people-different-multiracial-families-in-picture-books-and-the-dialogue-of-difference-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=3563","title":{"rendered":"Why Are People Different?: Multiracial Families in Picture Books and the Dialogue of Difference"},"content":{"rendered":"

Why Are People Different?: Multiracial Families in Picture Books and the Dialogue of Difference<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The Lion and the Unicorn
\nVolume 25, Number 3
\nSeptember 2001
\npp. 412-426
\nE-ISSN: 1080-6563
\nPrint ISSN: 0147-2593
\nDOI: 10.1353\/uni.2001.0037<\/p>\n

Karen Sands-O’Connor<\/strong><\/p>\n

The issue of race has often been contentious in children’s literature, from controversies over Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, to Bannerman’s Little Black Sambo<\/em>, to Keats’s The Snowy Day<\/em>, to Herron’s Nappy Hair<\/em>. How race is portrayed and who portrays it have been crucial for many critics. Violet J. Harris suggests this preoccupation with cultural authenticity, as she terms it, centers on “individual books and their portrayals of people of color, as well as the representation of specific aspects of their cultures such as values, customs, and family relationships” (40-41). Francis Wardle counters, “presenting the Black race and cultural group as a single, unified, world-wide entity is not only inaccurate, but denies the tremendous richness of economic, cultural, linguistic, national, political, social and religious diversity that exists in the world-wide Black community” (“Mixed-Race Unions” 200). This insistence on cultural authenticity poses even more problems when more than one culture is portrayed within a family, and it is perhaps for this reason that little has been written on the multiracial family as portrayed in literature.<\/p>\n

Even when the multiracial family is alluded to in criticism, the reference is rarely followed up. For example, Pat Pinsent comments in her chapter on “Race and Ethnic Identity” that “today there are few communities with any claim to be racially ‘pure’; in modern society there has been a considerable amount of intermarriage which has blurred any such distinctions even further” (91)…<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Why Are People Different?: Multiracial Families in Picture Books and the Dialogue of Difference The Lion and the Unicorn Volume 25, Number 3 September 2001 pp. 412-426 E-ISSN: 1080-6563 Print ISSN: 0147-2593 DOI: 10.1353\/uni.2001.0037 Karen Sands-O’Connor The issue of race has often been contentious in children’s literature, from controversies over Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,1196,8],"tags":[571,568,569,1394],"class_list":["post-3563","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-literary-criticism","category-media-archive","tag-francis-wardle","tag-karen-sands-oconnor","tag-the-lion-and-the-unicorn","tag-violet-j-harris"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3563","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3563"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3563\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}