Description
Book SynopsisThis volume focuses on a group of authors who began writing in the late 1980s. This group consists of eight authors who expanded the foundation and built a critical reputation that garnered a variety of nominations and awards. These authors are: Rita Williams-Garcia, Jacqueline Woodson, Angela Johnson, Nikki Grimes, Sharon Draper, Christopher Paul Curtis, and Sharon G. Flake, and Jewel Parker Rhodes. This volume has a chapter for each of these eight authors that focuses on their critical reception as authors, then discusses in some detail a single representative work, and, finally offers classroom activities for individual, small group, and whole class activities that will engage students in the work discussed.
Trade ReviewExpanding the Foundation; African American Authors of Young Adult Literature, 1980-2000 edited by Bickmore and Clark is a perfectly timed and carefully edited follow-up to On the Shoulders of Giants: Celebrating African American Authors of Young Adult Literature. The selections give readers an inside look into the fascinating lives of some of the most talented literary geniuses of our time, while including instructional strategies for educators and students to think critically and deeply. The book combines a perfect blend of history, research, theory, and practice about African American literature and provides us all--publishers, teachers, librarians, parents and students-- direction for examining African American literature.
-- Susan Densmore-James, PhD, Associate Professor; Director of the Emerald Coast National Writing Project; The Book Dealer
Table of ContentsForeword by Nancy Tolson
Acknowledgements
Introduction-Steven T. Bickmore and Shanetia P. Clark
THE FEATURED AFRICAN AMERICAN AUTHORS
- “We’re All Just People Here”: Freedom, Hope, and Migration in Brown Girl Dreaming
KaaVonia Hinton
2. Coming of Age and Confronting Sexual Identity in Jacqueline Woodson’s From The Notebooks of Melanin Sun
Tammy Szafranski and Steven T. Bickmore
3. A Life Revealed: Angela Johnson’s The First Part Last and the Transformation of the Personal Narrative
Matt Skillen
4. Nikki Grimes: Poet, Writer, Advocate, and Creative Spirit
Mary Napoli and Barbara Ward
5.Nikki Grimes: Poetry as Memior
Mary Napoli and Barbara Ward
6. Constructing Understanding Through Advocacy: A critical Disability Studies Perspective on Sharon draper’s Out of My Mind
Katie Caprino and Tara Anderson Gold
7. History, Memory, and Family Stories in Sharon Draper’s Stella by Starlight
Morgan Jackson and Steven T. Bickmore
8. An Examinatin of Who We are through Historical Fiction: Using Christopher
Paul Curtis’ The Journey of Little Charlie as a Magnifying Glass
Shanetia P. Clark
9.Finding and Accepting Oneself through Sharon G. Flake’s The Skin I’m In
Steven T. Bickmore and Tammy Szafranski
10. Narrating the Extraordinary Everydayness of Black Adolescents through the Works of Rita Williams-Garcia
Roberta Price Gardner
11. Jewel Parker Rhodes: Towers Falling, Hope Rising
Regina S. Carter, Bethany B. Mickel, and Felicia Moore
