(Re)membering Home(lands): Generative Analysis of Human Displacement in Children's Literature

Children's literature is a powerful pedagogical tool within culturally sustaining literacy classrooms. Drawing from generative metanarrative theory of human displacement, culturally sustaining pedagogies, and critical refugee studies, this research investigates how representations of home(lands) in 30 acclaimed picturebooks about children who experienced displacement could affirm critically informed history and cultivate cultural sustenance. We analyze the narrative structures of time space (chronotope) within and across these stories, as well as the substance therein, identifying troubling generic patterns. We propose strategies for remembering home(lands) through acts of collective imagining. Children’s literature is a powerful pedagogical tool within culturally sustaining literacy classrooms. Drawing from generative metanarrative theory of human displacement, culturally sustaining pedagogies, and critical refugee studies, this research investigates how representations of home(lands) in 30 acclaimed picturebooks about children who experienced displacement could affirm critically informed history and cultivate cultural sustenance. We analyze the narrative structures of time space (chronotope) within and across these stories, as well as the substance therein, identifying troubling generic patterns. We propose strategies for remembering home(lands) through acts of collective imagining.