Synopses & Reviews
"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.
Review
"Exhibits an impressive command of multiple disciplines to offer a compelling of reading of Jewish and African American childrens literatures. . . . Eichler-Levine's close readings of youth literatures and reader responses are always clear and often delightful as she deftly works at the crossroads, providing new signposts for navigating vexing questions at the intersections of religion, citizenship, trauma, and redemption." -Liora Gubkin,author of You Shall Tell Your Children: Holocaust Memory in American Passover Ritual
Review
"Jodi Eichler-Levines insightful book illuminates the importance of fear and suffering in shaping African American and Jewish childrens literature. Her book 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
Review
"Whats so exciting about Suffer the Little Children is that it brings a deeply grounded religious studies perspective to bear on contemporary American childrens literature in ways that enrich both the study of literature and our understanding of childhoods role in U.S. Judeo-Christian cultures. By focusing on American childrens books by and about Jews and African Americans and the core tropes that interweave through these texts—from the idea of 'chosenness' to the haunting spectre of genocide—Eichler-Levine gives new meaning to the idea of the `sacralized child. Suffer the Little Children sheds new light on the relationships between race, religion, citizenship, and childhood. It also reminds us once more of why childrens literature provides such a revealing lens for analyzing American culture."-Julia Mickenberg,Learning from the Left: Children's Literature, the Cold War, and Radical Politics in the U.S.
Review
"In this startling analysis of children's literature written by African Americans, Jews, and African American Jews, Eichler-Levine (religion/Jewish studies, Univ. of Wisconsin, Oshkosh) claims that 'redemptive' stories about victimization are a necessary part of these works in order to gain acceptance."-Choice,
Synopsis
This compelling work examines classic and contemporary Jewish and African American children's 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, children's 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. She illuminates how narratives of both suffering and nostalgia graft future citizens into ideals of American liberal democracy, and into religious communities that can be understood according to recognizable notions of reading, domestic respectability, and national sacrifice. If children are the idealized recipients of the past, what does it mean to tell tales of suffering to children, and can we imagine modes of memory that move past utopian notions of children as our future? Suffer the Little Children asks readers to alter their worldviews about children's literature as an "innocent" enterprise, revisiting the genre in a darker and more unsettled light.
About the Author
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. She received her BA in Near Eastern and Judaic Studies from Brandeis University and her Ph.D. in Religion from Columbia University.
Table of Contents
C o n t e n t s List of Illustrations ixAcknowledgments xiIntroduction: Wild Things and Chosen Children xiiiA Word about Language xxv1 Remembering the Way into Membership 1Part I : Cros s ing and Dwe l l ing:Afterl ive s o f Mos e s and Miriam 2 52 The Unbearable Lightness of Exodus 293 Dwelling in Chosen Nostalgia 57Part I I : Bind ing and Unbind ing:Hauntings o f I saac and J e phthah s Daughter 9 14 Bound to Violence: Lynching, the Holocaust, and the Limits of Representation 975 Unbound in Fantasy: Reading Monstrosity and the Supernatural 129 Conclusion: The Abrahamic Bargain 155Appendix: Childrens Books 161Notes 165Bibliography 205Index 221About the Author 227