ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the roots of jazz and the incorporation of jazz as a motif in several works of contemporary children's literature by and about African Americans. It also theorizes what it terms the "Sankofa-jazz paradigm", or a discursive approach toward understanding the culture-building potential of jazz in African American children's literature. It grants recognition of the special roles of black children and black elders as culture bearers and praises their collective ingenuity, creativity and endurance. Such children's stories as Jazzy Miz Mozetta uncover jazz as a vehicle that preserves and transmits African American culture from one generation to the next. Like the mythic Sankofa bird of the Akan tradition, jazz looks over its shoulder at the past while finding an audience in the present. Lastly, the chapter discusses some mechanisms of incorporating jazz aesthetics into educational curricula for the purposes of strengthening the identities of African American children in particular.
