Suffer the Little Children: Uses of the Past in Jewish and African American Children's Literature (North American Religion)

"Illuminates the importance of fear and suffering in shaping African American and Jewish childrens literature. . . . Gives a cogent understanding of how each community's difficult historical narratives coupled with their religious and social lives have helped to prepare children to engage an American civic life that has been hostile at times to their ethnic groups."

—Anthea Butler, University of Pennsylvania

 

This compelling work examines classic and contemporary Jewish and African American childrens literature. Through close readings of selected titles published since 1945, Jodi Eichler-Levine analyzes what is at stake in portraying religious history for young people, particularly when the histories in question are traumatic ones. In the wake of the Holocaust and lynchings, of the Middle Passage and flight from Eastern Europe's pogroms, childrens literature provides diverse and complicated responses to the challenge of representing difficult collective pasts.

 

In reading the work of various prominent authors, including Maurice Sendak, Julius Lester, Jane Yolen, Sydney Taylor, and Virginia Hamilton, Eichler-Levine changes our understanding of North American religions. If children are the idealized recipients of the past, what does it mean to tell tales of suffering to children? Suffer the Little Children asks readers to alter their worldviews about childrens literature as an “innocent” enterprise, revisiting the genre in a darker and more unsettled light.

 

Jodi Eichler-Levine is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies and Womens Studies at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh. Her work has appeared in American Quarterly, Shofar, and Postscripts.