Professor Autumn Womack

And so I think she's interested in this kind of overlooked, invisible child.

category, historically.

But there's also, I think, even a more simple explanation that I think she might say something like children have really interesting things to say, and we don't take them seriously.

And what would happen if we listened?

And what would happen if we took seriously the viewpoints or the outlooks or the perspectives of these little girls?

How might we see the world differently, if we could see it through their eyes, which she literally does.

And, you know, other other Black writers of this time period, like Toni K. Bambara, who she's close friends with, is also like really thinking about what does it mean to take the Black child's perspective seriously as a storyteller, as a narrator who can rise to the level of of the adult narrator.

Rewriting it or...

Like saying, what would happen if we put them at the center, right?

Or even, I mean, thinking about like the Dick and Jane primer.

What would happen if we cast this primer with Pico and her family?

Like then it kind of becomes, it dissembles.

What if we interchange what happens to the story and what parts of it need to be reassembled or reworked?

Or what parts of the architecture actually just can't hold this experience together?

You know, it's such a good question.

What part of the templates don't hold up if we think of something as simple as like a myth or origin story or a fairy tale or something like that?

Right.

But there's something about that is a progressive story where something gets resolved.

Either you find one's family or you, even if you go on like a long looping journey like Odysseus, like there is a point of arrival and there is an end and you marry the prince or I don't know, you stuff somebody into a furnace if it's Hansel and Gretel.

Yeah.