Like Children - (Performance and American Cultures) by Camille Owens

About the Book

"A history of childhood that revises the story of manhood, race, and human hierarchy in America"--

Book Synopsis

2025 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title
Honorable Mention, 24th Annual William Sanders Scarborough Prize, given by the Modern Language Association
Finalist, 2025 PROSE Awards: Literature

A new history of manhood, race, and hierarchy in American childhood

Like Children argues that the child has been the key figure giving measure and meaning to the human in thought and culture since the early American period. Camille Owens demonstrates that white men's power at the top of humanism's order has depended on those at the bottom. As Owens shows, it was childhood's modern arc--from ignorance and dependence to reason and rights--that structured white men's power in early America: by claiming that black adults were like children, whites naturalized black subjection within the American family order. Demonstrating how Americans sharpened the child into a powerful white supremacist weapon, Owens nevertheless troubles the notion that either the child or the human have been figures of unadulterated whiteness or possess stable boundaries.

Like Children recenters the history of American childhood around black children and rewrites the story of the human through their acts. Through the stories of black and disabled children spectacularized as prodigies, Owens tracks enduring white investment in black children's power and value, and a pattern of black children performing beyond white containment. She reconstructs the extraordinary interventions and inventions of figures such as the early American poet Phillis Wheatley, the nineteenth-century pianist Tom Wiggins (Blind Tom), a child known as "Bright" Oscar Moore, and the early-twentieth century "Harlem Prodigy," Philippa Schuyler, situating each against the racial, gendered, and developmental rubrics by which they were designated prodigious exceptions. Ultimately, Like Children displaces frames of exclusion and dehumanization to explain black children's historical and present predicament, revealing the immense cultural significance that black children have negotiated and what they have done to reshape the human in their own acts.

Review Quotes

"Like Children is a powerful exploration of the racialized construction of Black childhood in American history and culture ... This is a crucial work that deepens readers' understanding of how racism affects even the most vulnerable members of society--its children."-- "CHOICE"

"A tour de force. Culling from a dazzling array of archival materials, 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. Owens writes with sheer elegance, brilliant clarity, precision, and sophistication that unfolds page after page, chapter after chapter. Weaving together theory and history, Like Children is rich, dynamic, timely, and moving. This is scholarship at its best--and a spellbinding showcase of interdisciplinarity."-- "Kabria Baumgartner, Northeastern University"

"Luminous and thought-provoking, beautifully written and meticulously researched. Through skillfully navigating the historical trajectory of black child prodigies, Owens sheds light on their often-overlooked struggles and illuminates the profound gap between the idealized notion of prodigy and the harsh realities they faced. The depth of the scholarship is breathtaking, making Like Children a compelling work that is poised to make a dramatic intervention."-- "Amber Musser, CUNY Graduate Center"

"Owens debuts with a stimulating examination of how the stories of talented Black children from American history reflect the complicated intersection of race and childhood. She focuses on the tension between the extraordinary abilities of her subjects and the infantilization of Black people of all ages as 'lacking capacities of reason.'"-- "Publishers Weekly"

About the Author

Camille Owens is Assistant Professor in the Department of English at McGill University.