Voices of the Other: Children's Literature and the Postcolonial Context (Children's Literature and Culture) - Hardcover

McGillis, Roderick

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 081533284X ISBN 13: 9780815332848

Publisher: Routledge, 1999

Synopsis

This book offers a variety of approaches to children's literature from a postcolonial perspective that includes discussions of cultural appropriation, race theory, pedagogy as a colonialist activity, and multiculturalism. The eighteen essays divide into three sections: Theory, Colonialism, and Postcolonialism. The first section sets the theoretical framework for postcolonial studies; essays here deal with issues of "otherness" and cultural difference, as well as the colonialist implications of pedagogic practice. These essays confront our relationships with the child and childhood as sites for the exertion of our authority and control. The second section presents discussions of the colonialist mindset in children's and young-adult texts from the turn of the century. Here, works by writers of animal stories in Canada, the U.S., and Britain; works of early Australian colonialist literature; and Frances Hodgson Burnett's A Little Princess come under the scrutiny of our postmodern reading practices. Section Three deals directly with contemporary texts for children that manifest both a postcolonial and a neo-colonial content, and includes studies of children's literature from Canada, Australia, Africa, the Caribbean, and the United States.

About this title

About the Author:

Roderick McGillis is Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Calgary, Canada.

About this edition

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 081533284X
• ISBN 13: 9780815332848
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 312