The essays in this collection discuss multicultural issues in children's and adolescent literature, focusing particularly on African and African American cultures. They challenge everyone's understanding of what, in an age of globalization, multicultural texts really are. Cumulatively, these essays illustrate multicultural literature's power to…

In the period after the 1896 U.S. Supreme Court decision (Plessy v. Ferguson), "white" supremacy was codified and reinforced through law, custom, and mob violence. Despite this, African-descended women artists in the Western Hemisphere committed the revolutionary act of declaring, "I am; I am here; I am here remaking/reimagining the…

Using a feminist lens and a constructivist approach as the theoretical framework, we used rap lyrics and videos to help college students explore mass media's representation of the "independent" Black woman and the concept of "independence" in general. Students must be able to formulate their own concept of independence to…

Discusses how the aesthetic concerns of African Americans are reflected in the writing of Black women and introduces the characteristics of African culture as they relate to African-American culture. Emphasizes the intuitive musical quality of Black language as expressed in poetry and fiction. (FMW)

The "ISSS Annual Conference Proceedings" is a peer-reviewed professional publication published once a year following the annual conference. (Individual papers contain references.) [For the 2009 proceedings, see ED504973.]