Geographies of imagination: why decolonizing Polish children’s classics matters

Abstract

This article examines the iconography of blackness in the book covers of early Polish children’s literature. In doing so, it draws attention to textual practices that consciously or unconsciously reproduce the long-existing Eurocentric colonial/racial imaginaries of Africa and its people. This literature often depicts the inferiority of illustrated Black bodies, whilst highlighting the superiority of whiteness and Europeanness, as part of the global colonial/racial order. Such cultural productions, which contribute to the reproduction and dissemination of contemporary racism, are intertwined with the everyday experiences of people of colour in Poland.