The Letter F in Early Childhood Education: Fugitivity, Fantasy, Futurity, and Freedom

• In Event: 51.032 - Finding Freedom and Fugitivity in Literacies: Multimodal Narratives as Lived Resistance in Educational Spaces

Abstract

Scholars have been calling for richer depictions of black culture in children’s literature since the 1930s (Bishop, 2011). An array of authors of color (Woodson, 2011; Park, 2002) have described the joy of engaging with characters who come from their communities, talk like them, look like them, and tell their stories. Stories that address race and culture are important in early childhood education because they help the youngest readers think through questions of identity and (in)justice beyond fictional settings. Using a critical content analysis framework (Beach et. al, 2009) with the books Ada Twist, Scientist (Beaty, 2016) and Crown: An Ode to the Fresh Cut (Barnes, 2017), I will discuss how the concepts of fugitivity, fantasy, futurity, and freedom relate to contemporary depictions of blackness in children’s literature. I will also define these terms and their relationship to early childhood education. Nearly a century after the movement for more diversity in children’s literature began, the work continues. We have entered into an era where realistic fiction about communities of color is imbued with dreams about our futures. Campt’s (2017) and Sojoyner’s (2017) discussions of fugitivity and futurity relate to the ways in which young children envision and embody their futures with pretend play and storytelling. In Ada Twist, Scientist a little black girl with boundless scientific curiosity defies limitations placed upon her ability to inquire and discover. In Crown: An Ode to the Fresh Cut, a barber shop serves as the backdrop for a little black boy’s loving poem to his people. Using the aforementioned scholarly and literary works as a point of departure, I will take the following questions to task: 1) How can early childhood educators explore fugitivity, fantasy, futurity, and freedom with young children? 2) What does it mean for white authors and illustrators of children’s literature to contribute to notions of futurity for people of color? 3) To the extent that children learn about the world through literature, what happens when we (as authors and readers) reframe them as intelligent, intergalactic, forward-thinking, and fantastic(al)?

Author

• Brooke Harris Garad, Indiana University - Bloomington