TY - BOOK AU - Eichler-Levine,Jodi TI - Suffer the Little Children: Uses of the Past in Jewish and African American Children's Literature T2 - North American Religions SN - 9780814722992 AV - PS490 .E37 2016 U1 - 810.99282 23 PY - 2013///] CY - New York, NY : PB - New York University Press, KW - African Americans in literature KW - American literature KW - African American authors KW - History and criticism KW - Children's literature, American KW - Children's literature, Jewish KW - History in literature KW - Jews in literature KW - Suffering in literature KW - SOCIAL SCIENCE / Sociology of Religion KW - bisacsh N1 - Frontmatter --; Contents --; Illustrations --; Acknowledgments --; Introduction --; A Word about Language --; 1. Remembering the Way into Membership --; Part I: Crossing and Dwelling --; Afterlives of Moses and Miriam --; 2. The Unbearable Lightness of Exodus --; 3. Dwelling in Chosen Nostalgia --; Part II: Binding and Unbinding --; Hauntings of Isaac and Jephthah’s Daughter --; 4. Bound to Violence --; 5. Unbound in Fantasy --; Conclusion --; Appendix --; Notes --; Bibliography --; Index --; About the Author; restricted access N2 - Thiscompelling work examines classic and contemporary Jewish and African Americanchildren’s literature. Through close readings of selected titles publishedsince 1945, Jodi Eichler-Levine analyzes what is at stake in portraying religioushistory for young people, particularly when the histories in question aretraumatic ones. In the wake of the Holocaust and lynchings, of the MiddlePassage and flight from Eastern Europe's pogroms, children’s literatureprovides diverse and complicated responses to the challenge of representing difficultcollective pasts.In readingthe work of various prominent authors, including Maurice Sendak, Julius Lester,Jane Yolen, Sydney Taylor, and Virginia Hamilton, Eichler-Levine changes ourunderstanding of North American religions. She illuminates how narratives ofboth suffering and nostalgia graft future citizens into ideals of Americanliberal democracy, and into religious communities that can be understoodaccording to recognizable notions of reading, domestic respectability, andnational sacrifice. Ifchildren are the idealized recipients of the past, what does it mean to telltales of suffering to children, and can we imagine modes of memory that movepast utopian notions of children as our future? Suffer the Little Childrenasks readers to alter their worldviews about children’s literature as an“innocent” enterprise, revisiting the genre in a darker and more unsettledlight UR - https://doi.org/10.18574/nyu/9780814722992.001.0001 UR - https://www.degruyter.com/isbn/9780814724002 UR - https://www.degruyter.com/document/cover/isbn/9780814724002/original ER -