Author Archives: sadie

jim crow schools

Book Review of Twenty-First-Century Jim Crow Schools: The Impact of Charters on Public Education, by Raynard Sanders, David Stovall, Terrenda White

I won a copy of Twenty-First-Century Jim Crow Schools: The Impact of Charters on Public Education, by Raynard Sanders, David Stovall, and Terrenda White.

Description of book:

Charter schools once promised a path towards educational equity, but as the authors of this powerful volume show, market-driven education reforms have instead boldly reestablished a tiered public school system that segregates students by race and class. Examining the rise of charters in New Orleans, Chicago, and New York, authors Raynard Sanders, David Stovall, and Terrenda White show how charters–private institutions, usually set in poor or working-class African American and Latinx communities–promote competition instead of collaboration and are driven chiefly by financial interests. Sanders, Stovall, and White also reveal how corporate charters position themselves as “public” to secure tax money but exploit their private status to hide data about enrollment and salaries, using misleading information to promote false narratives of student success.

In addition to showing how charter school expansion can deprive students of a quality education, the authors document several other lasting consequences of charter school expansion:

– the displacement of experienced African American teachers
– the rise of a rigid, militarized pedagogy such as SLANT
– the purposeful starvation of district schools
– and the loss of community control and oversight

A revealing and illuminating look at one of the greatest threats to public education, Twenty-First-Century Jim Crow Schools explores how charter schools have shaped the educational landscape and why parents, teachers, and community members are fighting back.

Review:

The title of this book lets you know this is an anti-charter school text. Do not go in looking for a balanced, both sides of the issue discussion. Of the three essays, the last (by White) is the most nuanced, while the first represents what appears to be the charter school system in the worse shape. Unfortunately, even agreeing with a lot of the endpoints of Sander’s arguments in that first essay, I didn’t feel he successfully supported them. Similarly, I felt Stovall’s direct correlation between charter school systems and post-reconstruction jim crow was a bit of a stretch. Similarities exist for sure, but I think he stretched his analogy too far.

I did appreciate that each author acknowledged that charter school originated innocuously, as small, community-led schools before they were later essentially franchised. Lastly, taking all three essays as a whole, I was really surprised how many men are interviewed or references, considering how heavily skewed toward women the teaching field is.

reclaiming our space

Book Review of Reclaiming Our Space, by Feminista Jones

I won a copy of Reclaiming Our Space: How Black Feminists Are Changing the World from the Tweets to the Streets, by Feminista Jones through Goodreads. It has admittedly been sitting on my shelf waiting to be read for a while. I’ve just been super lazy about reading non-fiction for the past year or so. But I’ve recently committed myself to read the books I own that could further educate myself about the current social situation in America, it finally got some attention.

Description from Goodreads:

In Reclaiming Our Space, social worker, activist, and cultural commentator Feminista Jones explores how Black women are changing culture, society, and the landscape of feminism by building digital communities and using social media as powerful platforms. As Jones reveals, some of the best-loved devices of our shared social media language are a result of Black women’s innovations, from well-known movement-building hashtags (#BlackLivesMatter, #SayHerName, and #BlackGirlMagic) to the now ubiquitous use of threaded tweets as a marketing and storytelling tool. For some, these online dialogues provide an introduction to the work of Black feminist icons like Angela Davis, Barbara Smith, bell hooks, and the women of the Combahee River Collective. For others, this discourse provides a platform for continuing their feminist activism and scholarship in a new, interactive way.

Complex conversations around race, class, and gender that have been happening behind the closed doors of academia for decades are now becoming part of the wider cultural vernacular–one pithy tweet at a time. With these important online conversations, not only are Black women influencing popular culture and creating sociopolitical movements; they are also galvanizing a new generation to learn and engage in Black feminist thought and theory, and inspiring change in communities around them.

Review:

I’m not sure how I want explain this book. It’s always hard when a book doesn’t turn out to be what you expect, not bad but not what you picked it up for. I expected to read about modern Black feminists and I did, but not as much as I’d hoped and expected. I’d say this book is 50% memoir and of the remaining 50%, half of that is about Black women leading the way in making Twitter a viable and vibrant digital space and half is about Black feminism in that space. All of which is in the title, but I didn’t pick the book up expecting only a quarter of it to be directly about Black feminists.

Having said all of that, I thought the book was interesting. I am a white woman and a feminist. I try very hard to be aware of my privilege and avoid being a White Feminist. But privilege has an insidious way of being invisible until something is pointed out to you. So, in this way, I thought the book useful, chapter 10 (Mammy 2.0) especially.

All in all, not a bad read just not the one I was looking for.

Review of The Beatrice McIlvaine Adventure Books 1&2, by Bruce McCandless III

I won a copy of Beatrice at Bay through Goodreads. And since it happens to be the second book in the series, the authors (Bruce and Carson MacCandles) were kind enough to send along book one, Beatrice and the Basilisk

I admit that I don’t usually bother reviewing children’s’ books here on the blog, even when I read them. But the Beatrice McIlvaine Adventures impressed me, the second one more than the first. So, I’m giving them a place on the blog, even if the reviews are brief.

Description of Beatrice and the Basilisk:

12-year-old Beatrice McIlvaine has a problem. It’s not sixth grade math. It doesn’t involve boys. This problem is bigger than that, and it has a nasty bite. As Beatrice steels herself to fight a threat to the precarious existence she leads with her single mother and a troubled little brother, she finds she has friends in unexpected places. A modern parable about love, family, and killing giant flying reptiles, Beatrice and the Basilisk is short (8,000 words) but not entirely sweet. And there’s a lesson in there somewhere–if you can see through the dismal night sky, and beyond those dangerous teeth…

Review:

As an adult, I had to look over the hows and whys of the story, but otherwise I enjoyed it. (I even got a little teary.) I fully expected my young one to enjoy it. And in fact, she later came back to tell me she’d read and enjoyed it too.


Description of Beatrice at Bay:

Beatrice at Bay is the second installment of the Beatrice McIlvaine Adventure Series, which follows the feisty, freckled, and somewhat telekinetic Texas high schooler Beatrice as she makes her way in a world full of increasingly sophisticated threats. The series started with Beatrice and the Basilisk, a modern-day fairy tale that resonated unexpectedly with readers young and old. While Beatrice was twelve then, she’s fifteen now, and facing different challenges: a potential step-father; her own immense but uncontrollable powers; the weird kids sitting the in the plumber’s van outside; and—possibly most importantly—the end of the world. Can Beatrice channel her troubling destructive energies in the service of something greater than herself? Who can she trust at a beautiful school for gifted kids that isn’t quite what it seems? And what’s up with this Lester White Bull kid creeping on her Instagram feed?

Review:

I have to admit to being very surprised by this book. Whenever I get my hands on a random book I plan to pass to my children, I always give them a quick read just to be sure they’re age and message appropriate. I don’t usually expect to enjoy them much. I’m a 43 yo woman, after all, and this is an upper middle-grade book. (The protagonist is 15.) This time I did though. I thoroughly enjoyed the story, diversity, and plotline. However, I have to admit given the current pandemic it was a little too on the nose! I hope there will be more Beatrice adventures in the future.