Abstract: This article explores how children’s books writers Faith Ringgold and Christopher Myers adopt and revise the motif of embodied Black flight to address the concerns of Black childhood at the turn of the twenty-first century. The books under consideration—Ringgold’s Tar Beach (1991) and Aunt Harriet’s Underground Railroad in the Sky (1992) and Myers’s Wings (2000)—signify on the flying African myth, a foundational depiction of Black liberation that originates on the antebellum plantation. After events in the midcentury centered the adolescent in narratives of both racial violence and progress, the myth migrated from adult to children’s literature. This article contends that Ringgold and Myers rely on the myth to address issues facing Black youth such as police brutality and inequality in schools, while simultaneously offering a critical revision of the myth by casting Black girls in the role of the “elder figure” who passes on the secrets of flight.
Enrico Bruno (Thu,) studied this question.