on village life, not towns or city life; it would focus on people who were subsistence farmers or receiving aid; and there was this idea that people were living a largely agrarian lifestyle. “There simply wasn’t an acknowledgement of commerce, manufacturing or even doctors and other professionals. The children didn’t go to school, or if they did it was a very basic village schools – the kind my mother went to in 1940s. Those were the kinds of images I was overwhelmingly confronting with my dissertation.”
While Phyllis’ original thesis was on the depictions from Britain’s colonial past, her own heritage stems from Africa and she says that she started looking at fiction books set in the continent. Again, she was presented with uncomfortable portrayals of people and places that did not reflect the reality of life for the vast majority of African people. She says: “I’ve got a pile of notebooks – I was constantly taking notes, and writing lists of books that I found to be particularly problematic.” Some of the books were critical
Autumn-Winter 2023
and commercial success stories, and Phyllis admits that they are often “very well written and have compelling storylines”. Despite having very narrow and unrefined portrayals of life in Africa, many received warm praise. But Phyllis describes the depictions as “the exotic spectacle of indigeneity, which refers to showing people living in tribes and a condescending folk wisdom”. Add to that clichés around “village life and children that don’t attend school, famine, child soldiers, child trafficking, and natural disasters”, and it is clear that writers are focusing on a stunted view of what life in Africa is like.
Latest population statistics show that around half of all people in Africa live in an urban setting. That proportion will grow as towns and cities absorb around two thirds of future population growth over the next 25 years. Like much of the world, the shift is happening in favour of urban living – yet you would be hard- pressed to find a portrayal in children’s books that matches the reality. As with many of these poor portrayals of marginalised people in all walks of life, the issue can often be found in a lack of
research and an outdated world view. For Phyllis, an obvious solution is to focus on the character rather than the place – ensuring that ethnically marginalised characters are the centre of the story. “What’s lacking is the breadth of subject matter,” says Phyllis. “Where are the typical types of characters that you see in other children’s books? Where is the African wizard, for instance?” There are issues closer to home as well, with British children from ethnically marginalised backgrounds struggling to find that type of representation in the books they read. Phyllis says: “The Americans have been doing it rather well with people like Jason Reynolds – a previous Carnegie Medal winner. “But things are changing here – there have been some books out recently that are putting black and brown characters in some really fun and funny books. Amari and the Night Brothers by BB Alston, Anisha, Accidental Detective series by Serena Patel, and the Planet Omar books by Zanib Mian.
“When I’m recommending the Amari books I can talk about it being a kind of black Harry Potter with the central
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