Jason Reynolds's Stamped: A Young Adult Adaptation for All Ages

Abstract:Jason Reynolds's Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You (2020) joins a centuries-long tradition of adapting adult books for children. This paper argues that Stamped is an antiracist text that raises important, interconnected questions about adaptation, purpose, and audience. Like many history texts about Black experiences in the US such as Julius Lester's To Be a Slave (1968) and James Baldwin's The Fire Next Time (1963), Stamped reveals the line between children's and adult literature is fabricated, as racism is not restricted by age, and racism impacts Blacks and non-blacks across generations. While To Be a Slave and The Fire Next Time are among a number of possible precursors, Stamped aligns with these two nonfiction texts because just as Stamped was written in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement, the other two were also born out of significant social movements and can be read as antiracist texts. Reynolds's style, storytelling techniques, and formatting transforms Kendi's history book, Stamped from the Beginning, to a text with a broader audience and purpose.