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RE-STORYING EDUCATION

DECOLONIZING YOUR PRACTICE USING A CRITICAL LENS

A well-presented consideration of a generations-long problem in education.

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A manual for educators to decolonize their classrooms and put the focus on Indigenous cultures.

The author—a direct descendant of Chief Hunter Jack of the N’Quat’qua Nation and a former elementary school principal for the Squamish nation—is a proponent of re-storying education in Canada, which she describes as “a process of dismantling old narratives to rebuild and re-story new narratives to include historically silenced voices in education, to make space for all stories of this place to be told.” Her book is aimed at educators, encouraging them to teach Indigenous history and interact with Indigenous students more authentically. To do this, she argues, educators need to unlearn the colonial framework of education. The book’s eight chapters include a history of how the public education system has failed the Indigenous people (and how to correct that failing), a discussion of how colonialism is manifested in the classroom, and a plan for assessing how these changes are being implemented. The chapter titled “Journey through Education,” in particular, is full of useful information from the author’s personal memories of an education that served to reinforce the colonial point of view to arguments for more Indigenous representation in school curricula to ways in which the grade-school curricula need to be revamped and updated. (This chapter also tackles weighty topics about representation and racism in the classroom.) This is all very heavy material, but the author doesn’t get bogged down. The structure of each chapter—including musical playlists to listen to as you read, a handful of questions for reflection, and a handy list of resources—makes for an easy read, one that not only explores the problems it raises but also offers a range of solutions. All of this combines to give the reader a thorough look at what the author finds lacking in the Canadian education system and the steps that can be taken to help correct it.

A well-presented consideration of a generations-long problem in education.

Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2024

ISBN: 9781774584965

Page Count: 224

Publisher: Page Two

Review Posted Online: Aug. 1, 2024

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2024

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THE MESSAGE

A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.

Bearing witness to oppression.

Award-winning journalist and MacArthur Fellow Coates probes the narratives that shape our perception of the world through his reports on three journeys: to Dakar, Senegal, the last stop for Black Africans “before the genocide and rebirth of the Middle Passage”; to Chapin, South Carolina, where controversy erupted over a writing teacher’s use of Between the World and Me in class; and to Israel and Palestine, where he spent 10 days in a “Holy Land of barbed wire, settlers, and outrageous guns.” By addressing the essays to students in his writing workshop at Howard University in 2022, Coates makes a literary choice similar to the letter to his son that informed Between the World and Me; as in that book, the choice creates a sense of intimacy between writer and reader. Interweaving autobiography and reportage, Coates examines race, his identity as a Black American, and his role as a public intellectual. In Dakar, he is haunted by ghosts of his ancestors and “the shade of Niggerology,” a pseudoscientific narrative put forth to justify enslavement by portraying Blacks as inferior. In South Carolina, the 22-acre State House grounds, dotted with Confederate statues, continue to impart a narrative of white supremacy. His trip to the Middle East inspires the longest and most impassioned essay: “I don’t think I ever, in my life, felt the glare of racism burn stranger and more intense than in Israel,” he writes. In his complex analysis, he sees the trauma of the Holocaust playing a role in Israel’s tactics in the Middle East: “The wars against the Palestinians and their Arab allies were a kind of theater in which ‘weak Jews’ who went ‘like lambs to slaughter’ were supplanted by Israelis who would ‘fight back.’” Roiled by what he witnessed, Coates feels speechless, unable to adequately convey Palestinians’ agony; their reality “demands new messengers, tasked as we all are, with nothing less than saving the world.”

A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2024

ISBN: 9780593230381

Page Count: 176

Publisher: One World/Random House

Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2024

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2024

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BEYOND THE GENDER BINARY

From the Pocket Change Collective series

A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.

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Artist and activist Vaid-Menon demonstrates how the normativity of the gender binary represses creativity and inflicts physical and emotional violence.

The author, whose parents emigrated from India, writes about how enforcement of the gender binary begins before birth and affects people in all stages of life, with people of color being especially vulnerable due to Western conceptions of gender as binary. Gender assignments create a narrative for how a person should behave, what they are allowed to like or wear, and how they express themself. Punishment of nonconformity leads to an inseparable link between gender and shame. Vaid-Menon challenges familiar arguments against gender nonconformity, breaking them down into four categories—dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope (fear of the consequences of acceptance). Headers in bold font create an accessible navigation experience from one analysis to the next. The prose maintains a conversational tone that feels as intimate and vulnerable as talking with a best friend. At the same time, the author's turns of phrase in moments of deep insight ring with precision and poetry. In one reflection, they write, “the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power.” While this short essay speaks honestly of pain and injustice, it concludes with encouragement and an invitation into a future that celebrates transformation.

A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change. (writing prompt) (Nonfiction. 14-adult)

Pub Date: June 2, 2020

ISBN: 978-0-593-09465-5

Page Count: 64

Publisher: Penguin Workshop

Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020

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