Abstract:

This essay investigates how racial progressivism intersected with the production of children's literature in the U.S. over the first seven decades of the twentieth century, by using a variety of archival materials preserved in Muriel Fuller's manuscript collection at Hunter College. Fuller, the first literary agent of the African American popular novelist Frank Yerby, was a typical yet very well-connected editor in the juvenile sector from the late 1930s. She was also a leading member of the Children's Book Council (CBC) in the mid-1940s and was just one of dozens of white women charged with shaping the direction of "juvenile literature" as this business consolidated over the middle decades of the twentieth century. At midcentury, the CBC's vacillations between embracing and resisting the reform of racial and ethnic depictions dovetailed with much-older, black and interracial attempts to reform children's books. The CBC's rejection of the censorship of children's books that were deemed racially prejudiced, and of collectivist efforts more generally, illuminate the limits of postwar racial reform.

摘要：

本文通过使用亨特学院穆里尔·富勒 (Muriel Fuller) 的手稿收藏中保存的各种档案材料，调查了种族进步主义在 20 世纪的前 70 年如何与美国儿童文学的创作相交织。富勒是非裔美国流行小说家弗兰克耶比的第一位文学代理人，是 1930 年代后期青少年界典型但人脉广泛的编辑。她还是 1940 年代中期儿童图书委员会 (CBC) 的主要成员，并且是在二十世纪中叶这个行业不断巩固的过程中负责塑造“少年文学”方向的数十名白人女性之一. 在本世纪中叶，CBC' 在接受和抵制种族和族裔描述改革之间的摇摆不定与更古老的、黑人和跨种族的儿童读物改革的尝试相吻合。CBC 拒绝对被认为具有种族偏见的儿童读物进行审查，并拒绝更普遍的集体主义努力，这说明了战后种族改革的局限性。