posted on 2025-06-30, 05:51authored byKaren Chandler
Karen Chandler's "Playing to Girls in Virginia Hamilton's Her Stories and Patricia McKissack's Porch Lies: Frames of Selfhood, Community, and Audience" considers the female voice in traditional African American stories, pondering the ways in which girls' and women's experience is featured and valorized in traditional porch, tall, and folk tales dominated by male heroes. Chandler considers Hamilton's collection, Her Stories, comprised of exclusively female heroes, and McKissack's Porch Lies, which, while traditional in its male-dominance, is narrated by a young girl who actively makes each story her own. Chandler seeks out depictions of agential female heroes even in settings that might initially indicate conventions of female passivity.
History
Journal
The Looking Glass : New Perspectives on Children's Literature
ISSN
1551-5680
Volume
17
Issue
2
Publisher
La Trobe University
Section Title
Alice's Academy
Author Biography
Karen Chandler, an associate professor at the University of Louisville, writes about and teaches courses on African American print and vernacular cultures. She is currently working on a book about representations of history in African American children's literature.
Date Created
2014-05-07
Rights Statement
Essays and articles published in The Looking Glass may be reproduced for non-profit use by any educational or public institution; letters to the editor and on-site comments made by our readers may not be used without the expressed permission of that individual. Any commercial use of this journal, in whole or in part, by any means, is prohibited. Authors of accepted articles assign to The Looking Glass the right to publish and distribute their text electronically and to archive and make it permanently available electronically. They retain the copyright and, 90 days after initial publication, may republish it in any form they wish as long as The Looking Glass is acknowledged as the original source.
Data source
OJS data migration 2025: https://ojs.latrobe.edu.au/ojs/index.php/tlg/article/view/478
