Neo-Imperialism in Children's Literature About Africa

Yulisa Amadu Maddy is a Sierra Leonean playwright, novelist, and literary critic who has taught at Morgan State University, the University of Iowa, and in Zambia, Nigeria, and Sierra Leone. His publications include Obasai and Other Plays; the coming-of-age novel No Past, No Present, No Future; and the co-authored African Images in Juvenile Literature: Commentaries on Neocolonialist Fiction (1996) and Apartheid and Racism in South African Children's Literature, 1985-1995 (2001).Donnarae MacCann was the director of the Laboratory School Library at UCLA prior to teaching children’s literature at the University of Kansas and Virginia Tech, and African American Studies at the University of Iowa. Her publications include White Supremacy in Children's Literature: Characterizations of African Americans, 1830-1900 (1998, 2001), which won the Children's Literature Association Book Award, and the co-authored works on Africa: African Images in Juvenile Literature and Apartheid and Racism in South African Children's Literature, 1985-1995 (2001).

• Series Editor’s ForewordAcknowledgmentsIntroductionPart I: BackgroundChapter One: "Darkest Africa": A Persistent Western FantasyChapter Two: Feminism in Africa: Complexities and ActivismChapter Three: Institutional Racism Part II: Neo-imperialist Stories, 1994-2008Chapter Four: Eurocentric Feminism in The Shadows of Ghadames and Our Secret, Siri AangChapter Five: White Supremacy in Isabelle Allende’s Forest of the PygmiesChapter Six: Anti-African Themes in "Liberal" Young Adult NovelsChapter Seven: Crime and Crime Syndicates in Many Stones and Zulu DogChapter Eight: "Doomed Races" in Elana Bregin’s "Ella's Dunes"Chapter Nine: Disease and the "Darkest Africa" Myth: Novels about AIDS and SmallpoxChapter Ten: When the West Talks to Itself: Ethnocentricity in Nancy Farmer’s "African" NovelsChapter Eleven: Child Soldiers and Survivors in Chanda’s Wars Part III: Rewarding the BestChapter Twelve: Out of Bounds and the Legacy of South African Child MartyrsEpilogueSelected BibliographyIndex

"Complete with notes, this is a valuable resource for those interested in African Studies or children's literature....Highly recommended."-- Choice, June 2009"A veritable gold mine of vigorous rebuttals against distortions of Africa found in literature for children. It is an invaluable contribution to making multiculturalism and social justice relevant in our contemporary multicultural world, which cannot afford any more irrelevancies or any more affirmations of human inequality."- Osayimwense Osa, Virginia State University, Research in African Literatures, Vol. 41, No. 3 (Fall 2010)