African American Children’s Poetry

This work examines African American children’s poetry through a variety of lenses: jazz poetics, the blues, nonsense verse, gender and working-class studies. African American children’s poetry reveals legacies of segregation, the Great Migration north, and racial and gender reckonings in U.S. history. Works by Gwendolyn Brooks, Langston Hughes, Lauryn Hill and Wynton Marsalis reveal warnings, scenes of empowerment and moments of remembrance for children and young adults. This is the first academic book to investigate African American children’s poetry thematically across two centuries, including hip hop lyrics and jazz poetry.

Wynn William Yarbrough teaches composition, children’s literature, technical writing, British literature and the capital capstone course in the interdisciplinary general education program at the University of the District of Columbia. His academic research interests include assessment and composition pedagogies and curriculum; anthropomorphic tales; gender; African-American children’s poetry, and Edwardian literature. He is currently on the board of the Association of General and Liberal Studies and has been a regular member of the Children’s Literature Association for over 17 years.

Wynn William Yarbrough
Format: softcover (6 x 9)
Pages: 191
Bibliographic Info: notes, bibliography, index
Copyright Date: 2025
pISBN: 978-1-4766-9529-7
eISBN: 978-1-4766-5253-5
Imprint: McFarland

Introduction 1

1. Education, Pedagogy and “Opening the Field”: African American Children’s Poetry and Jazz Poetics 13

2. Playing It Real: Identity and Nonsense Poetics 29

3. Worryin’ the Line: The Influence of the Blues 53

4. Grit, Grace, Griottes: Representations of Femininity 71

5. Boys to Men: Visions and Revisions of Masculinity 93

6. Still We Rise: Representations of Work 114

7. Into the ­Twenty-First Century She Goes: Jacqueline Woodson’s Brown Girl Dreaming 140

Brave New Frontiers—Conclusion 167

Bibliography 175

Index 183

• “An urgently necessary study for the fields of children’s literature and Black studies, African American Children’s Poetry offers fresh readings of both landmark texts and innovative new voices. Not only does the book engage the intersecting literary and cultural forces that shape the complexities of Black children’s poetry, but its impressive range of attention—from educational frameworks to nonsense poetry, from blues traditions to gender studies—allows us to see the richness of this understudied body of poetry. The book’s lively, accessible style affirms its invitational spirit: in African American Children’s Poetry, students, scholars, and lovers of poetry will discover a world of Black children’s literature that dazzles in its artistry and cultural significance.”—Katharine Capshaw, University of Connecticut, author of Children’s Literature of the Harlem Renaissance and Civil Rights Childhood: Picturing Liberation in African American Photobooks

• “Wynn William Yarbrough shines a much-needed light on twentieth-century African American poetry for young readers… In the pages of African American Children’s Poetry, Yarbrough shows how the social contexts through which we encounter these key figures impacts our understanding of the themes in their works. An exciting foundational contribution that weaves together the fields of poetry and children’s literature.”—Krystal Howard, PhD, California State University, Northridge