African American Children’s Poetry: Themes, Issues and Social Context

This work examines African American children’s poetry through a variety of lenses: jazz poetics, the blues, nonsense verse, gender and working-class studies. African American children’s poetry reveals legacies of segregation, the Great Migration north, and racial and gender reckonings in U.S. history. Works by Gwendolyn Brooks, Langston Hughes, Lauryn Hill and Wynton Marsalis reveal warnings, scenes of empowerment and moments of remembrance for children and young adults. This is the first academic book to investigate African American children’s poetry thematically across two centuries, including hip hop lyrics and jazz poetry.

Wynn William Yarbrough has published articles on Rudyard Kipling, Kenneth Grahame, and A.A. Milne. An assistant professor of English and children’s literature at the University of the District of Columbia, he lives in Mount Rainier, Maryland.