Like Children

Camille Owens’ Like Children is a tour de force. Culling from a dazzling array of archival materials, including letters, photographs, poetry, and primers, Owens traces the beginning of modern American childhood. She carefully peels back the layers, revealing the prominent place of Black children in the construction of white manhood and American humanism. Black prodigy, as Owens writes, then becomes “a rule, or pattern itself,” with a figure like Phillis Wheatley coming into view as a progenitor of American childhood. This book achieves what it sets out to do: “to show that childhood is our major pedagogy, and measure of being human.” Owens makes apparent, especially in the unsettling story of musician Tom Wiggins, how white men reconstructed forms of power in slavery’s afterlife. And, at the same time, she narrates the power that Black children have wielded – through poetry or music, in law or politics – in the face of this. Owens writes with sheer elegance, brilliant clarity, precision, and sophistication that unfolds page after page, chapter after chapter. She beautifully weaves together theory and history, offering insightful close readings and intriguing ideas that leave the reader in deep wonder long after closing the book. Like Children is rich, dynamic, and moving, not to mention timely. This is scholarship at its best—and a spellbinding showcase of interdisciplinarity. * Kabria Baumgartner, Northeastern University *