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Sprinkling Black Girl Magic in the Middle-Grade Novel

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Sprinkling Black Girl Magic in the Middle-Grade Novel Sprinkling Black Girl Magic in the Middle-Grade Novel Sarah E. Whitney a Abstract: In this article, I consider middle-grade tween literature through a Black Girl Magic framework that creates space and visibility for girls of color in post- feminist America. I read two works of fiction by middle-grade author Sherri Win- ston through such a lens. By locating girls’ tweenhood as a space of developmental continuity, and by claiming an aesthetic of sparkle, Black Girl Magic readings can re-situate dominant interpretations of the tween literary hero and provide exciting new methods for reading middle-grade fiction. Keywords: African-American literature, children’s literature, civic engagement, girl crisis, politics, postfeminism, social justice, tween b Marley Dias, an 11-year-old student recently reflected on the problems with her classroom’s literary selections. “I was only able to read books about white boys and their dogs,” she mused. “I didn’t relate to them, so I didn’t learn lessons from those stories” (quoted in Flood 2016: n.p.). In response, Dias launched an internet campaign to collect texts aimed at young people that feature African American female protagonists. The project, which went viral under the hashtag #1000blackgirlbooks, received widespread acclaim. To date, Dias’s project has resulted in the worldwide distribution of over 9,000 volumes of children’s literature.1 Marley Dias’s activism exemplifies Black Girl Magic, a mediated discourse affirming African-American girls’ contri- butions, strength, and resilience. Black Girl Magic creates visibility for girls of color in a primarily white postfeminist space by demanding affirmative recognition, and by claiming an aesthetic of sparkly brilliance which, as Mary Celeste Kearney (2015) argues, is often used to represent white and heteronormative girlhoods. Following Marley Dias’s interest in diversifying tween literature, we might ask how a novel for girls her age, when read through a Black Girl Magic lens, can help expand our understanding of tween genre expectations. Author Sherri Winston’s middle-grade series (hereafter President series), Pres- ident of the Whole Fifth Grade (2010) (hereafter Fifth Grade) and President Girlhood Studies 11, no. 1 (Spring 2018): 108-125 © Berghahn Books doi: 10.3167/ghs.2018.110109 ISSN: 1938-8209 (print) 1938-8322 (online) SPRINKLING BLACK GIRL MAGIC IN THE MIDDLE-GRADE NOVEL b of the Whole Sixth Grade (2015) (hereafter Sixth Grade), traces an African- American tween’s threshold experiences between childhood and adolescence, and maps new directions in the literary interpellation of tween girlhood. Rather than follow a typical narrative predicated on a girl-in-crisis experience for the (predominately white) tween hero, Winston emphasizes the contin- uous progression of her protagonist’s skills over the transition from elemen- tary to junior high school, and adds supportive adult female mentors. By offering a politics of continuity rather than liminality, Black Girl Magic nov- els remind audiences that the protagonist’s autonomy, independence, and excellence have always been, and will continue to be present. Furthermore, the celebratory aesthetic meanings of Black Girl Magic discourse are high- lighted in Winston’s texts through the assertive fashion style and creative baking work of the protagonist, Brianna, which challenges the white-dom- inated, hyper-feminine culture of tweenage sparkle. Black Girl Magic read- ings of middle-grade literature like Winston’s President series provide new and empowering frameworks to represent the tweenage girl. #Blackgirlmagic Beginnings In 2013, blogger CaShwan Thompson, using the phrase “BlackGirls - AreMagic,” paid tribute to the contributions of women in her family. Thompson, who is widely recognized as the originator of the Black Girl Magic label wanted “to celebrate us” and “to put out there that we’re great and we do great things …” (quoted in Ali 2016: n.p ). In a hostile world in which black girls and women, writes Ashley Ford, “have been routinely denied their humanity” and subjected to “an enduring belief that our backs were built to carry what others would consider unimaginable burdens,” Black Girl Magic discourse restoratively celebrates their resiliency. “When we call ourselves beautiful anyway, when we succeed anyway,” notes Ford, “that’s Black Girl Magic” (2016: n.p.). Ford’s reference to beauty reminds us that Black Girl Magic, which is widely disseminated on the internet through pictures, memes, and videos, possesses a strongly visual element and commemorates young black women’s style, grace, and flair. Prima bal- lerina Misty Copeland has emphasized Black Girl Magic’s power of visual self-affirmation in a white-dominated society, noting that “it couldn’t be more positive for a young Black girl to see that it’s okay to be yourself, it’s okay to not have to transform and look like what you may see on the cover of a lot of magazines” (quoted in Scott 2016: n.p.). Singer Corinne Bailey 109 a SARAH E. WHITNEY Rae considers Black Girl Magic as a space of free engagement and play, find- ing it to be “about being fun and sparkly and fully experiencing life and not having your life defined by your Blackness and representation of what Black- ness is” (quoted in Lewis 2016: n.p.). A corrective discourse in the face of racist neglect, Black Girl Magic affirms achievements and capabilities of young women of color that have always existed, but have gone unrecognized or ignored by white society. Furthermore, it joyfully claims an aesthetic cen- trality usually accorded only to white women and girls. It is important to acknowledge that, while widely embraced, the concept of Black Girl Magic has also been critiqued. Many African-American women artists like author Toni Morrison and filmmaker Julie Dash have created memorable black female characters with extra-human abilities. Yet the asso- ciation of the word magic with young black women might summon up another mediated image, known as the magical Negro, film and television’s selfless, unfailingly helpful sidekick.2 Furthermore, in a widely-discussed article taking issue with the phrase Black Girl Magic, Linda Chavers observes that a label of magic exceptionalism might be “constricting rather than free- ing,” particularly given the oppressive “strong black woman” (2016: n.p.) stereotype. Black Girl Magic could also sound overly optimistic, Chavers cautioned, in a world in which black girls and women experience high rates of violence. Responding to Chavers’s arguments, Ashley Ford extols CaShawn Thompson’s role in creating the phrase, as opposed to advocating an outwardly imposed stereotype. Ford also urges us to consider the term “magic” not in a supernatural context, but rather as “an inside joke” of “call- ing what [black women have] always known to be real about our capabili- ties ‘magic’” (2016: n.p.). (See also Talayah Hudson (2016) for a response to Chavers’s critiques of Black Girl Magic). As time goes by, the meanings and uses of the term Black Girl Magic will continue to grow. Yet in an age in which the postfeminist girlification of women has been extended well into adulthood, what of Black Girl Magic’s interventional efficacy for actual preadolescent girls? The tween, an eight- to-twelve-year-old subject, represents a highly desirable slice of the youth market. She is characterized as female by default; as Natalie Coulter observes, the tween persona is “shaped by, and conversely influenced, the lives of sub- urban white girls in consumer culture” (2014: 5). Black Girl Magic, which celebrates “the universal awesomeness” of black girls and “celebrating anything we deem particularly dope, inspiring, or mind-blowing about our- selves” (Wilson 2016: n.p.) confronts a tween culture that is not represen- tative of its concerns. 110 SPRINKLING BLACK GIRL MAGIC IN THE MIDDLE-GRADE NOVEL b Tween iconography is primarily white; characters of color in tween- focused corporate juggernauts like Nickelodeon and the Disney Channel are present, but as Angharad N. Valdivia observes, they are often constructed with “subtle and ambiguous ethnicity that is palatable to the dominant cul- ture” (2011: 94). Critiques of tween popular culture similarly use white- centric reference points; Barbie is often invoked in discussions of premature sexualization or bad role modeling, and Disney’s princess culture is frequently skewered for promoting a passive construction of femininity (For- man-Brunell and Hains 2015; Orenstein 2011; Sweeney 2007). The brand- ing and typology of tweens similarly trends white. Recently, impossibly high achieving young women, known variously as perfect girls, alpha girls, or super girls have risen to media visibility; these “bright, disciplined, hard- working girls who excel in school and are poised to not just take on the world but take it over” (Pomerantz and Raby 2017: 4) are overwhelmingly represented as white and middle-class. As Dias’s intervention showed, the tweenage literary world is also pre- dominately white. Middle-grade fiction is the consumer label accorded books marketed to youths in the tween age group. While some have criti- cized the artificiality of the middle-grade label, it exerts significant capital by influencing editorial acquisitions, determining categories for literary awards, and enabling teachers, librarians, and parents to identify appropriate reading material. As literary agents Mary Kole (2012) and Marie Lamba (2014) have usefully illuminated, middle-grade works feature externally focused plots written
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