African American Girls and the Construction of Identity


Book Description

In African American Girls and the Construction of Identity, Sheila Walker closely examines socioeconomic class and explores the way it shapes how African American girls experience race and gender in the process of their identity formation. While all the girls who participated in the two-year study are African American, their lives are racialized and gendered in significantly different ways, in both public and private spaces. Affluence is not a guaranteed protection against the identity-damaging effects of racism, and poverty is not necessarily a risk factor for an irresolute identity. By examining identity through the lens of class, Walker provides researchers, educators, and parents a more in-depth appreciation of what is a very complex, multi-layered phenomenon.




Black Girls' Literacies


Book Description

Bringing together the voices of leading and emerging scholars, this volume highlights the many facets of Black girls’ literacies. As a comprehensive survey of the research, theories, and practices that highlight the literacies of Black girls and women in diverse spaces, the text addresses how sustaining and advancing their literacy achievement in and outside the classroom traverses the multiple dimensions of writing, comprehending literature, digital media, and community engagement. The Black Girls’ Literacies Framework lays a foundation for the understanding of Black girl epistemologies as multi-layered, nuanced, and complex. The authors in this volume draw on their collective yet individual experiences as Black women scholars and teacher educators to share ways to transform the identity development of Black girls within and beyond official school contexts. Addressing historical and contemporary issues within the broader context of inclusive education, chapters highlight empowering pedagogies and practices. In between chapters, the book features four "Kitchen Table Talk" conversations among contributors and leading Black women scholars, representing the rich history of spaces where Black women come together to share experiences and assert their voices. A crucial resource for educators, researchers, professors, and graduate students in language and literacy education, this book offers readers a fuller vision of the roles of literacy and English educators in the work to undo educational wrongs against Black girls and women and to create inclusive spaces that acknowledge the legitimacy and value of Black girls’ literacies.




Displacing Whiteness


Book Description

DIVA collection of anti-racist, critical essays on the specific (localized) constructions of whiteness, white identities and white privilege edited by the author of the very successful White Women, Race Matters (U. Minn.)/div




The Construction of Whiteness


Book Description

A CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title, 2017 This volume collects interdisciplinary essays that examine the crucial intersection between whiteness as a privileged racial category and the various material practices (social, cultural, political, and economic) that undergird white ideological influence in America. In truth, the need to examine whiteness as a problem has rarely been grasped outside academic circles. The ubiquity of whiteness--its pervasive quality as an ideal that is at once omnipresent and invisible--makes it the very epitome of the mainstream in America. And yet the undeniable relationship between whiteness and inequality in this country necessitates a thorough interrogation of its formation, its representation, and its reproduction. Essays here seek to do just that work. Editors and contributors interrogate whiteness as a social construct, revealing the underpinnings of narratives that foster white skin as an ideal of beauty, intelligence, and power. Contributors examine whiteness from several disciplinary perspectives, including history, communication, law, sociology, and literature. Its breadth and depth makes The Construction of Whiteness a refined introduction to the critical study of race for a new generation of scholars, undergraduates, and graduate students. Moreover, the interdisciplinary approach of the collection will appeal to scholars in African and African American studies, ethnic studies, cultural studies, legal studies, and more. This collection delivers an important contribution to the field of whiteness studies in its multifaceted impact on American history and culture.




African American Young Girls and Women in PreK12 Schools and Beyond


Book Description

African American Young Girls and Women in PreK12 Schools and Beyond: Informing Research, Policy, and Practice presents a comprehensive viewpoint on preK-12 schooling for African American females. This volume offers readers compelling evidence of the educational challenges and successes for this student population.




Cultivating Achievement, Respect, and Empowerment (CARE) for African American Girls in PreK?12 Settings


Book Description

chapters discuss issues impacting the education of African American girls and many of challenges that they encounter during their schooling experiences. The chapters were written by 24 authors including a school superintendent, university administrator and professors, classroom teacher, mother and a 10th grade African American student. The 20 chapters of the book are organized into four sections. Section one introduces the book and provides critical perspectives. Section Two focuses on Curriculum and instruction. Section Three shares information from significant stakeholders while the last section includes other schooling experiences and ends with a powerful poem by a tenth grade African American girl, entitled “Proud.” The forward of the book, written by a Japanese American scholar, Valerie Pang, denotes the urgency of the book noting that the book “warms the heart.” The book ends with an epilogue, written by an African American scholar, Tyrone Howard, who has a vested interest in African American males. He shares commanding interest in this scholarship, because what happens to African American females, impacts African American males and the entire African American community.




African American Women’s Language


Book Description

African American Women’s Language: Discourse, Education, and Identity is a groundbreaking collection of research on African American Women’s Language that is long overdue. It brings together a range of research including variationist, autoethnography, phenomenological, ethnographic, and critical. The authors come from a variety of disciplines (e.g., Sociology, African American Studies, Africana Studies, Linguistics, Sociophonetics, Sociolinguistics, Anthropology, Literacy, Education, English, Ecological Literature, Film, Hip Hop, Language Variation), scientific paradigms (e.g., critical race theory, narrative, interaction, discursive, variationist, post-structural, and post-positive perspectives), and inquiry methods (e.g., quantitative, qualitative, ethnographic, and multimethod) while addressing a variety of African American female populations (e.g., elementary school, middle school, adults) and activity settings (e.g., classrooms, family, community, church, film). Readers will get a good sense of the language, discourse, identity, community, and grammar of African American women. The essays provide the most current research on African American Women’s Language and expand a literature that has too often only focused on male populations at the expense of letting the sistas speak.







Black Girls and Adolescents


Book Description

This one-of-a kind book challenges the current thinking about black girls to show how America has failed them—and what can be done to make their lives better. African American girls are one of the United States' most endangered populations, yet meaningful explorations of the issues that impact their lives are almost nonexistent. In this riveting book, led by one of the African American community's best-known scholars, experts from across the nation explain the risks, challenges, and influences—both good and bad—faced by black girls and teens. The work shows how our society is failing them, and it outlines what can and should be done to help these young women lead happier, healthier, more successful lives. The book covers a wide range of concerns, including obesity, substance abuse, sex trafficking, gangs, teen pregnancy, and suicide attempts. Stress, low self-esteem, anger, aggression, and violence are explored, as are failures of our education system and of a legal system that tends to victimize young black women. A substantial section on parenting and mentoring discusses ways to counter the negative influences that are a constant for many black girls and adolescents. It is time for American society to recognize and react to the realities these young women face, making this book a must-read for caring parents, teachers, nurses, guidance counselor, doctors, school administrators, and school board members.




Kids Talk


Book Description

Between early childhood and adulthood, language acquisition is succeeded by a bloom of repertoire for managing interaction, a growing sensitivity to the relation of language and society, an expanding ability to wield power through the strategic use of language, and an increasing sophistication in framing speech activities. This book examines a wide range of language practices among school-age children and teenagers, using data from naturally occurring recorded talk and from careful observation of interaction in peer groups. The contributors analyze talk at play, at school, and at work, documenting the growing communicative skills of young people while always focusing on what young speakers themselves do with (and through) language. Theoretical constructs to which the contributors appeal include Goffman's notion of footing and Hymes' communicative competence, as well as multiple characterizations of discourse structure. The chapters show older children as strategic language users, dynamic actors who are often concerned with defining themselves as a distinctive group, different from adults, yet who just as often display proficiency at sophisticated discourse activities that presage those of adulthood.