An inspiring vision of a newly inclusive democracy.
With guidance and encouragement, children can participate as effective citizens.
Psychiatrist Earls and neurobiologist Carlson bring decades of research in child development and experience with at-risk children to their persuasive plea for young people’s inclusion in active citizenship. Organizing their book into four themes—nurture, voice, choice, and action—the authors examine the influences on children of their earliest attachments, citing in particular Romanian orphans who, from birth to age 3, were deprived of loving contact and Brazilian street children, whose care for one another reflected early nurturing by adults. The authors reveal how young people were inspired by the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child “to assemble, to find common cause, and to speak up about their concerns.” Working with two groups in Chicago’s urban neighborhoods demonstrated to the authors how children’s participation helped communities make choices “about how to monitor stress in the context of out-of-home care and urban violence.” In Tanzania, children conceived of and conducted “a massive public education campaign, showing their parents and neighbors the reality of HIV and how to combat it.” Reflecting their years of research and dedication to an action-based, participatory approach, the authors provide specific guidelines for parents, teachers, police, and other authority figures in setting up a Young Citizens program, aimed at children ages 10 to 14, in their own communities. They recommend, for example, that children should be selected randomly, ensuring equal opportunity for all, and that adult facilitators “have some grounding in child development and complete a two-week, full-day training in a standardized but highly participatory curriculum.” Drawing on Amartya Sen’s writings on human development and Jürgen Habermas’ theories of social justice, the authors underscore that “when members of a community come together to identify and freely discuss their common problems, their discussion is not ‘just words’ but rather the first step toward consensual, rational, shared social action.”
An inspiring vision of a newly inclusive democracy.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-674-98742-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Belknap/Harvard Univ.
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2020
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future.
Atlantic senior writer Coates (The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son’s life. “I am wounded,” he writes. “I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, beaten into obedience by his father. “I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked,” he remembers, “but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. Howard, he writes, “had always been one of the most critical gathering posts for black people.” He calls it The Mecca, and its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons, helping him to understand “that the black world was its own thing, more than a photo-negative of the people who believe they are white.” Coates refers repeatedly to whites’ insistence on their exclusive racial identity; he realizes now “that nothing so essentialist as race” divides people, but rather “the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” After he married, the author’s world widened again in New York, and later in Paris, where he finally felt extricated from white America’s exploitative, consumerist dreams. He came to understand that “race” does not fully explain “the breach between the world and me,” yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered by “majoritarian bandits.” Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live “apart from fear—even apart from me.”
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”Pub Date: July 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9354-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.
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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