My African Children

So far in class we have had the opportunity to read literature from many different origins including: Scotland, England, Ireland, Germany, and China. This has been extremely interesting to me to see the differences in the works from different origins. Some works I have found are more patriarchal, while others gladly support feministic power. Some villains are witches, others ogres, and plenty of evil stepmothers. Because I enjoy traveling myself I have noticed in different cultures the diversity in how their children are raised. Recently I have had the chance to travel to Africa to work with AIDS orphans, mostly ranging in age from 5 to 17 years. I did notice however the lack of children’s literature, and I was not sure if this was because of the poor economic status of the area I was, or, if it was because there just was not any being written.

Researching this, I found that it must have been the latter. There is plenty of African children’s literature out there, it has just evolved much later than in other countries. In an article by Lillian Temu Osaki, she states “Books like Black Beauty, Sleeping Beauty, Beauty and the Beast, Alice in Wonderland, and Snow White and the Seven Dwarves are a few examples. These books have a western background and are based on western values. While some of them present moral teachings, I would argue that African children would have benefited more if they had read these books alongside books that had an African background with African cultural values.” The culture in Africa is drastically different than the cultures around the world. Evil is very predominant in the children’s lives, witch doctors still exist, and war is so real to them. In this non-protected environment, I know that allowing children to enter into this fantasy world of make believe and good over evil, sometimes can be dangerous. Yet, in the case of African children, I feel as though they need these stories to escape from their reality. In my research I was very happy to find, that more and more authors are writing stories just for the precious children of Africa!