Song of the Land

Sarah Layzell is a writer and editor. Their research has focused on economics in children’s literature and sports in children’s literature. Layzell is author of the children’s novel, Cottonopolis. Tammy L. Mielke is an English language arts teacher and academic. Her research focuses on the ways in which culture is represented in literature intended for children and young adults. Her previous publications include a history of illustrations of Little Black Sambo and responses to African American dialect in children’s literature in the 1930s. She has also published on steampunk, representations of religion in YA fiction, and the concept of flow in coteaching contexts. Michelle H. Martin became the Beverly Cleary Endowed Professor in Children and Youth Services in the Information School at University of Washington in 2016, and she was the inaugural Augusta Baker Endowed Chair in Childhood Literacy at the University of South Carolina from 2011-2016. Her current research project, Dream Keepers for Children of the Sun, is a critical analysis of the collaborative and individual works that Langston Hughes and Arna Bontemps wrote for children during their 40-year friendship. Martin co-founded with Dr. Rachelle Washington Read-a-Rama (www.Read-a-Rama.org), a non-profit that uses children’s books as the springboard for programming.

"Song of the Land is a testament to the richness of Mildred Taylor’s legacy and to the diverse practices that enrich our understanding of Black children’s literature." - Karen Michele Chandler, author of Tending to the Past: Selfhood and Culture in Children's Narratives about Slavery and Freedom

• AcknowledgmentsPoetic Tribute: An Oriki for MildredY. Falami DevoeIntroductionMichelle H. MartinPoetic Tribute: Homemade Love: Sower. Weaver. Receiver.Raen Parker WashingtonPart 1: The Self: Intersectionality and Insider/Outsider PerspectivesThe Story in the Silence: Reading Between the Lines in Mildred D. Taylor’s Logan Family SagaLatrice Ferguson"I Wanted to Write a Truthful History": Intersections of Critical Race Theory and Gender Schema in Mildred D. Taylor’s WorkShelly Shaffer, Melissa Bedford, and Ann Van WigBeyond the Veil: In Search of Duboisian Double Consciousness in the Works of Mildred D. TaylorHelen BondRacial Education and Audience in All the Days Past, All the Days to ComeJani L. BarkerPart 2: The Self: Reimagining the LogansRe(cover)y of the Logan Family SagaNgozi Onuora and Sabrina CarnesiRe/figuring the Child-Signifier and Agency in the Film Adaptation of Mildred D. Taylor’s Roll of Thunder, Hear My CryDevika MehraHow the Logans Travel to the East: Exploring the Persian Translations of Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, The Friendship, and The WellBahar EshraqPart 3: The World Outside: White Supremacy, Justice, and the LandWhite Supremacy and the Black Storyteller’s Narrative UnveilingSusan Browne and Wanda Brooks"Don’t Speak for the Trees—Listen": Mildred D. Taylor’s Song of the Trees for Environmental JusticeLauren RizzutoContested Space: The Black Agrarian Tradition in Mildred D. Taylor’s The LandEmily Cardinali CormierHer Bandage Hides Two Festering Sores That Once Perhaps Were Eyes: "Justice" in the Logan Family Saga and To Kill a MockingbirdCatharine KanePart 4: The World Beyond: Legacy, Activism, and EducationDisrupting Mavericks: Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, The Hate U Give, and Critical Race TheoryAnnette WannamakerCare Ethics and Activism in Mildred D. Taylor’s Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry and Angie Thomas’s The Hate U GiveBryanna TidmarshBlending Fact and Fiction: All the Days Past, All the Days to Come as a Novel of Black ResistanceJennifer AnsbachList of Contributors