Jane Addams’s Legacy: An Interview with Author Susan C. Griffith

Jane Addams was an extraordinary woman, a leader dedicated to peace and empowerment of women, an activist whose work for social justice improved the lives of so many people. Her life and work continue to inspire those of us concerned with social justice today. In 1915 she founded the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF). After Addams’s death, members of the WILPF created the Jane Addams Children’s Book Award. Presented annually, the award honors children’s books that invite readers to think deeply about peace, social justice, world community, and equality for all races and genders. It’s an important award that’s not as well known as it should be.  The Jane Addams Children’s Book Award: Honoring Children’s Literature for Peace and Social Justice since 1953 (Scarecrow Press, September 2013), a new book by Susan C. Griffith, will hopefully help to rectify that.

“The Jane Addams Children’s Book Award: Honoring Children’s Literature for Peace and Social Justice since 1953 is the first book to examine the award as well as its winners and honor books. In this volume, Susan C. Griffith reviews and synthesizes Addams’s ideas and legacy, so that her life and accomplishments can be used as a focal point for exploring issues of social justice through children’s literature.  In addition to a history and overview of the award, this work contains annotated bibliographies with thematically arranged winners and honor books bestowed in Addams’s name. Supporting literature study in classrooms and integrating points of reflection drawn from the activist’s life, The Jane Addams Children’s Book Award is an invaluable resource for educators, students, and librarians.”  — From the Publisher’s Website

I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to interview Susan about her inspiring new book, and the award it examines.

E.M. Kokie:  Describe briefly what the Jane Addams Book Award is, and how you got involved with it.

Susan C. Griffith: The Jane Addams Children’s Book Award (JACBA) is an honor given annually by the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom and the Jane Addams Peace Association to children’s books of high literary quality, published in the United States, that best engage young readers in thinking about peace, social justice, world community and equality of all sexes and races.  It was established in 1953. At first, it honored just one children’s book a year but, as the scope of children’s literature itself widened, the number of books commended each year did, too.  Today, one winner and up to two honor books are chosen annually in two categories, Books for Younger Children and Books for Older Children.

I first learned about the Addams Award in the late 1970’s when I worked at the Cooperative Children’s Book Center (CCBC) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  Ginny Moore Kruse, then Director of the CCBC, served on the Addams Award Committee.  She invited me to collaborate on a program about the Award—she discussed the Award and some of the books it honored, and I presented a profile of Jane Addams

Many years later, in 2004, when I had just moved to my current position teaching children’s literature at Central Michigan University, there was an opening for a member from the Midwest, and I was asked to consider being a member of the committee.  Since I had kept my eye on the Addams Award over the decades, I knew that this would be an opportunity to combine two of my passions—social justice and children’s literature—so I said “Yes!” without hesitation.

EK: How does serving on the Jane Addams Book Award committee differ from other award committees on which you have served?

SG: The JACBA is a Peace Education Project of the Jane Addams Peace Association, the educational arm the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF).  Members of the Award committee are social justice activists who have demonstrated knowledge of children’s literature and children.  They are educators, librarians, teachers, child advocates, parents, children’s literature specialists and citizens who represent a range of regions and cultural groups in the United States. The task of the Committee is focused on excellent rendering of social justice subject matter and themes for children.

Other national book award committees that I have served on were projects of professional organizations.  While committee members represented a range of regions and cultural groups, too, each member had a profession—teacher or librarian—in common.  Their focus was on literary and artistic excellence in books with a wide range of subject matter and themes.

So, while the mix and mingle of the discussions on each committee was focused differently, ultimately each was centered on identifying high quality books that would bring young readers the best books possible.

EK: How do you define social justice?

SG: Social justice is the fair and humane distribution of power, resources, and opportunity that make possible what Jane Addams herself called peace:  “the unfolding of worldwide processes making for the nurture of human life” (Newer Ideals of Peace, 131).

EK: What was your process for researching the book? What resources were especially helpful?

SG: In 2003, as a newly appointed Addams Award committee member, I attended the National Council of Teachers of English annual conference. There, I participated in a session called “Jane Addams and the Call to Education” chaired by David Schaafsma, University of Illinois, Chicago.  During the session a group of scholars presented their work based on Addams’ own writing as well as scholarship about her.  They explained how they were using this work to enrich and shape their own thinking about educational policies and methods.  These scholars spoke of recently published biographies, scholarly work about Addams, and their own research using her ideas as point of analysis.  This was the moment my research began.

Many strands of research support this book.  First, I set out to learn about the life and philosophy of Jane Addams.  I read books written by Addams herself; Democracy and Social Ethics, Newer Ideals of Peace, The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets and Peace and Bread in Time of War were the most influential. I read biographies of her written by twenty-first century scholars, including Louise W. Knight, Katherine Joslin, Victoria Bissell Brown and Jean Bethke Elshtain, and I read scholarship that analyzed her work by Charlene Seigfried and Harriet Hyman Alonso.

With almost nothing in print about the Addams Award in secondary sources, I examined and created primary source material to compose together a history of the Award.  I collected data from the archives of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom held by Swarthmore College’s Peace Collection.  I consulted historical material made available by the Cooperative Children’s Book Center and used the archives of the American Library Association.  In addition, I conducted oral history interviews with all living chairs of the Addams Award Committee—Jean Gore, Judith Volc, Ginny Moore Kruse and Donna Barkman—and the former executive director of JAPA, Ruth Chalmers.

Then, I assembled two collections:  One consists of the 200 books that have been honored by the Addams Award since 1953.  The other consists of nearly all of the biographies of Jane Addams written for children since the first, Jane Addams of Hull-House by Winifred Wise, was published just after Addams’ death in 1935 (this is the only authorized biography of Addams for children). And, of course, I read and read and read.

EK:  Looking back over past winners, what book surprised you the most? Were there any books for which your perspective or appreciation of the book changed due to the process of researching and writing the book?

SG: Looking back over the past winners and honor books, what surprises and pleases me the most is the depth, nuance, continuity and richness of the body of work commended by JACBA. As I brought research on Addams’ life and on JACBA history to the task of creating the annotated bibliography, I came to see that over the six decades of the Award the books consistently reflect the values of Jane Addams and the organization she co-founded, WILPF, and the one she inspires, JAPA.  The body of work commended by the Addams Award—in line with Addams, WILPF and JAPA—affirms these tenets:  Peace is a process.  Peace and social justice go hand in hand.  Without power and equality for women, there can be no peace.

EK: Looking back at the past winners, what changes have you seen over time? And has the definition of social justice changed or remained constant?

SG: I would say that the conceptions of social justice brought to the Addams Award have been constant over the years. Nearly all of the stories are stories of resilience, creativity and courage, mostly that of children facing injustice and conflict.  These are stories that show HOW children think through their situations, where they go for resources and how they develop inner resources to face forces from the outside world that shape and limit their private lives. They are stories of ordinary life constricted by injustice, repression and conflict that invite discussion and action to address hierarchies of power, privilege, resources and opportunity.

The most striking and obvious change that I see— a change I credit to the hard and persistent work of African Americans, Latinos and Latinas, Asian Americans, Native Americans, Middle Eastern Americans, women, gays and lesbians, poor people, people with disabilities and children themselves who insist that their stories be heard and used to think about and form the future—is this:  a shift in focus from stories about children from what was once called foreign or other countries and white children in the U.S. to stories about children of many cultures facing injustice both within and outside the United States.

EK: Do you see any new or emerging issues that might gain greater prominence or relevance in discussions about peace, social justice, world community, or equality of the sexes and all races in the near future?

SG: While I am sure that new issues that are relevant and urgent for discussions of peace and social justice will emerge, I believe that it is an “old” one that needs to be addressed moment-in and moment-out each day.  Jane Addams said it clearly over a hundred years ago in her first published book Democracy and Social Ethics (1902):

“We have learned as common knowledge that much of the insensibility and hardness of the world is due to the lack of imagination which prevents the realization of the experiences of other people.”

 

Thank you, Susan, for sharing your insights on the Jane Addams Book Award, and for your work that has resulted in such an important book. Congratulations on its publication.

The Jane Addams Children’s Book Award: Honoring Children’s Literature for Peace and Social Justice since 1953 will be celebrated by the Jane Addams Peace Association as part of the 2013 Jane Addams Children’s Book Award ceremony on Friday, October 18, 2013, at 2:30pm, at 777 United Nations Plaza, Floor 2 (44th & 1st, across from the United Nations Building), New York City.  For more information on the event, see the WILPF website.

 

** Susan C. Griffith is associate professor, English Language and Literature at Central Michigan University where she teaches children’s literature and English education courses. She served on the Jane Addams Children’s Book Award Committee for nine years, including four years (2007-2010) as Chair.