Listening to and with the lives of adolescents

It's been far too long since I posted an entry here. I have no one to blame but myself... but for good measure I'll also give a little credit to the very long and not always voluntary todo list that consumed me for the past many months.

But another reason is a very good one -- the publication of a new volume that brings a focus of arts and aesthetics to the work my research team and I have been doing over the past several years. Arts, Media, and Justice: Multimodal Explorations with Youth features contributions from graduate students, youth researchers, arts educators, and established literacy scholars who take up various contours of the intersections of the titular concepts of the book. The book is co-edited with Tiffany DeJaynes, a wonderful colleague and friend who is up to some amazing work of her own with high school students turned budding qualitative researchers.

Building from this volume, that draws on the Reimagining Futures Project, last year some colleagues, graduates students and I launched the Youth, Media, and Educational Justice Project -- a consortium that we are building in an effort to bring participatory approaches to the study and support of the lives of court-involved youth, including the young people involved in the Juvenile Justice system with whom we have been working for the past near decade (and a bit longer than that for some of us...!) as well as young people in foster care who will likely age out while still in the the care of the child welfare system.

What, pray tell, might this have to do with adolescent literacies? In this work we are deeply informed by the basic ideas that have always grounded my study of young people's literate lives:

• youth are engaged in myriad forms of expression and communication (thus rendering the use of "illiterate" utterly moot); 
• found within adolescents' literacies are markers of affiliation and connection (to communities, to people, to texts, and more);
• the varied contours of youths' literate lives are replete with evidence of their ways of knowing -- of knowing about the world, of making themselves known in the world.

We bring to this set of underlying assumptions new questions about belonging and becoming, questions that gain new urgency in the current and ongoing discourses of laws and policies that place adolescents' wellbeing at a far remove from decision making. Most notably, these concerns are brought into stark relief in the ongoing and deeply divided debates about the NYPD's #stopandfrisk policies, including today's ruling on the policy.

We take as our mission four entry points into the pursuit of educational justice for court-involved youth in which our position and posture is that of listening both to and with young people:

• Media making
• Mentoring
• Research
• Education

I, along with my YMEJ team members, will be blogging about these and related ideas over on our YMEJ blog. I encourage you to follow and also to keep up with us on Twitter.


Next up here -- a short post about some of the excellent reads I encountered this summer, all of which touched, in some way, on adolescents' ways of communicating, knowing, being, becoming, and belonging...

Wishing you a restorative August in the meantime.

So that we may shame the shamers

The beginning of the autumn semester brought me into contact with Jessica Ringrose's research on sexting and the related practices of shaming going on in the daily, digitally mediated practices of some adolescents. This past month has brought into stark relief the ways in which shaming and symbolic violence are manifested as actual, heinous, unimaginable violence and violation of another human being. 

Here, I've curated a selection of artifacts -- articles, media, and more -- that touch on various aspects of shaming. These aren't intended to sensationalize, glorify, or horrify. They are meant, simply, to educate, inform, and generate further inquiry. I'll continue to add more over the next few weeks, as well.

• On "slut-shaming" -- a collection of cites inspired by a youth-produced radio piece 

• A Teenage Girl's Perspective on the Culture of Online Slut-Shaming - by Temitayo Fagbenle

• Sexual Cyberbullying: The Modern Day Letter A - by Courtney Stein

• Radio Rookies live chat for teens on sexual cyberbullying

• Sexting: The Risks of Everyday Sexualised Communication among Children

• A qualitative study of children, young people and ‘sexting - by Jessica Ringrose

• On the murder of Delhi student Jyoti Singh Pandey.
• As a Girl in India, I Learned to Be Afraid of Men - by Mira Kamdar
• Purity culture is rape culture - by E.J. Graff
• On shame and (mis)understanding "the other"
• Literacy, speech, and shame: The cultural politics of literacy and language in Brazil - by Lesley Bartlett
• Concerning identity - by John Berger
• and related video of Berger reading from the piece 

adolescents and literacies - a few headlines to ponder

Headlines that caught my eye this week, which, because of other looming deadlines, will remain on the back burner... for now.

• No hard feelings for boy jailed because of fake gun - philly.com
• Meet the 'Fly Boys' of Memphis, the Future of American Education - theatlantic.com
• Long Island School Inexplicably Suspends Student For Class Project About Bullying - thinkprogress.org
• Majoring in Potterology - salon.com

And a project that has me scratching my head, pulling out my beat up copy (no pun intended) of Discipline and Punish, and just feeling a bit uneasy all around: What does the geography of incarceration in the United States look like? - @joshbegley via @jamilahking

Just because I haven't had time to further ruminate and comment, doesn't mean you can't enjoy some food for thought.

On reading and the joys of patient storytelling -- An incomplete essay

I’ve got a case of textual compulsion, I’ll tell them when they inevitably come to cart me away. I only wish I had the words when I was younger, when I would get lost in the words of others – not because my intention was to ignore my family or friends, but because the pages bound together inside the various hard and soft covers strewn haphazardly about the floor, on the shelves, and in the closet of my childhood bedroom bore keys to secret places and magical worlds where the improbable was the norm, where the norm seemed unimaginable, and where an author’s quotidian noticings of a piece of paper, pane of glass, or sounds of water splashing from an afternoon swim infused my adolescent melancholy with near-idiotic giddiness. It would be incomplete to say that I defined myself through my reading, although that statement, however trite, was true. No, it was more than that, more than stories and word paintings as a mere escape from reality or as the original Second Life. Rick Moody’s definition of textual compulsion comes close:

“it’s a joyful and exciting thing when you’re in the midst of it, textual compulsion.

… true textual compulsion is that there has to be that element of sacrifice. Are you foregoing food and social relations? Are your personal relationships suffering? Are you going to read these books more or less sequentially?”

From my earliest memories, as a child and into adolescence, reading was an act through which I embraced the words and their creator (or perhaps their curator); the author was never far from my thoughts: where did she sit or stand or lounge when this image came into her mind? Was the story waiting for him or did he find his way into it? Who does this character remind her of? Was Kansas or the 7^th century or a pair of green shoes or a windy day particularly important to him? Did she experience a moment like the one that Berger describes when a scattering transforms into a meaning-full constellation: “At a certain moment -- if you're lucky -- the accumulation becomes an image -- that's to say it stops being a heap of signs and becomes a presence.”

I was seven or eight years old the first time I selected a book for myself beyond the bins of books in the classroom. We – that is, my fellow classmates and I – had been escorted to the library by our teacher. (And if I am remembering correctly, this is our second grade teacher whose hair was never anything but extravagantly voluminous.) While most had chosen a book and were either sitting and reading or talking quietly with each other, I had wandered over to an unfamiliar section where the bookcases were higher – six shelves instead of three. This memory, true or not, is held in my mind’s eye much like a rubbing made from a stone carving or sculpture – textured, tactile, a once removed representation of the thing, a new thing itself. This differs from another reading memory in which I am performing my first solo read aloud of “Three Billy Goats Gruff” a couple of years earlier for my uncle who was visiting from London; this is my parents’ story, my uncle’s story, my grandmother’s story and has become a part of my mental memory box as part recall and part verbal reconstruction of the retellings of others. Charlotte Linde, during a talk she gave at Teachers College a few years ago, said of this very notion that “Our story exists in the memories and narratives of others.” And they in ours.

But that afternoon or morning in the library, Carolyn Keene felt like my own discovery and the adventures of Nancy, Bess, and George were mine to explore, free from the expectations of others. I have a constructed memory of the forest green, linen book cover with fraying, slightly yellowed corners and pages that were not pristine – evidence that more than a few someones before me had thumbed through them. Holding the book, I remember turning it around in my hands, already convinced that it would be my check out for the day, and opening to the back – not to the end of the story, an action I regard as wholly unholy within the covenant between writers and their readers, but to the inside back cover where a small, manila colored pocket had been affixed, inside of which was a white, lined card onto which names and dates had been written and crossed out with some ceremony. It’s one of the things I miss in this era of digital downloading (a club to which I happily belong). No longer are we privy to the glimpses of the lives a book was enmeshed in for a while before coming into our temporary guardianship. And it is perhaps why visiting used bookstores sparks in me a familiar sense of possibility of what might be found inside, on the shelves and table, inside the pages, tucked into book jackets. (We may never really know the secret lives of books.)

The relationship is an intimate one, between reader and writer. Amelie Rorty assumes as much in her essay “The ethics of reading” when she implores us, as readers, to consider the author’s house – a magnificent image as ever there was one for visualizing the structural integrity of words and their foundations into and out of which stories are written – in how we read a text. We are meant to investigate a text, not merely to “get the information” but also to consider how it is and was located in the life of the author, and to conceive of the author, therefore, as situated in the world. Answers to the many questions that Rorty invites us to consider in her essay are not meant to be definitive; hers is not advocacy for navigating “text complexity” – rather, we are meant, as readers, to render visible – to fall into as it were – the beauteous complexity of texts. Can there be anything more revealing than the words of others? The ones that find their way to the final publication draft no doubt had countless antecedents. And to find wordsmithing that evokes joy, wonderment, and a desire to reread even before the initial read is complete – how can such discoveries lead to anything but textual compulsion?

In his essay, from which I quote above, Moody was referring directly to the work of W.G. Sebald. Since first reading a few pages of The Emigrants online, at the suggestion of a colleague, I have been transfixed by Sebald’s writing. I can’t yet say with any degree of eloquence or articulation exactly why this author’s words stay with me long after I read them, and now I cannot separate the reading of his words from the extensive readings of the man; the story of his stories invite this reader in more fully, with a wide embrace. In the film “Patience (After Sebald)” by filmmaker Grant Gee, more of these authorial layers are lifted ever so slightly to allow glimpses of the author’s multiple and varied situatedness. Gee intentionally stacked his interviews with artists and in so doing created a filmic narrative that foregrounds Sebald’s artistic craft. (A favorite image is one that a colleague of Sebald’s constructs as he recalls the author’s practice of taking photographs with highly precise lenses, taking them to be developed at the local pharmacy, Boots, and then copying them again and again, sometimes literally taking an eraser to the copies in order to create just the right amount of blurring; with both images and words, Sebald artfully obfuscated even as he explicated, offered rich description in order to unsettle a reader’s complacency.)

And it was Sebald who led me to “Open City,” a book by Teju Cole that has come to be so much more than a title on my “already read” list. I have reread this book in its entirety and again in parts several times over since first learning of it through pure serendipity: a search for something Sebaldian, while I was participating in my colleague’s summer seminar in which we pored over and read closely several of Sebald’s works, yielded a list of reviews of the then-recently published Open City. What first caught my eye were the consistent comparisons made about Cole to Sebald. Having had an intense introduction to the latter, I was compelled to read the former. That simple decision, to read a book, brought me into an already-happening dialogue that the book's narrator, Julius, was having with the imagined reader (or perhaps with himself). Reading Cole, like Sebald, was a welcoming experience -- even as they offer new intellectual tributaries to follow, their prose also pulses with tropes that, while seemingly familiar, resonate precisely because they are largely unexplored. Reading their words was very much like discovering a secret that begged, at once, to be closely guarded and also to be shared with the world. As a reader, I had a full sense of belonging. I daresay in their words – words that journeyed far to bring the world nearer – I found a home. I learned quickly, however, that it was I who was on a journey that was far from being over; whatever this was, it had barely begun. Textual compulsion was reincarnated in this moment and led to an experience of heightened awareness about myself as a reader; the lives of those who storied with grace, with measure, and with nuance beckoned through their words. And each of these authors is careful with his words. That’s not to say that their writing is guarded or distant – in fact, quite the opposite is true. The narrative in Sebald’s The Emigrants, Austerlitz, and Rings of Saturn and Cole’s Open City is unhurried, attentive, embodying what Cole himself has described as a “breathable” quality. In these texts are orchestrations of words about the lives and worlds of selves and others that reflect a deep listening to the intermingling of souls. 

A kinship relationship emerges in the work of these writers that is bound by patient storytelling and Cole and Sebald are forever linked in my mind as one led me to the other, and then back again. And so it has continued this past year as their literary conversation – as Julius talks with Max Ferber, as Austerlitz makes meaning of Cole’s small fates – plays as a nonstop reel in the backdrop of my mind while I have found my way to Kiran Desai and Muriel Barberry and Iris Murdoch and Elizabeth Bowen. Sebald’s Campo Santo moved me to read Nabakov’s Speak, Memory, and Cole’s essays – among them, his views on Aciman’s Essay on Elsewhere and more recently on Ondaatje – have furthered my journey down, up, through, and around the proverbial, even Rilke-esque, rabbit hole. And in each instance, with every textual encounter, despite what may seem like an underlying narrative of reading voraciousness, these literary perambulations have remained, as the content may suggest, unhurried and unfolding. Patience in storytelling gently demands the same of readers. (Can we allow ourselves to be patient readers?)

How, then, do some words and prose become the ones we carry with us, in ways that they become part of our waking hours and penetrate our dreams? I’m not sure entirely, but the following passage from Jens Brockmeier’s essay on memory and Sebald’s Austerlitz suggests a place to start that inquiry. 

"No doubt, Austerlitz demands a serious reader who follows attentively a meandering syntax without clear paragraph structure, a peculiar mixture of the narrative voices of the protagonist and the narrator, several layers of free indirect thought and discourse, and wide-ranging associative chains that encompass extensive accounts of very specific details that may or may not contribute to a labyrinthine plot, if we can call it a plot at all. But my sense is that this book is puzzling not only because of its demanding narrative composition but also, more importantly, because it offers, in an unusual, perhaps unique way, a new view of memory and the autobiographical process."

small fate of "illiteracy" looms large

The word “illiteracy” gives me pause.

No, that’s not quite right.

When I hear or read the word “illiteracy” I stop cold.

Closer.

The word “illiteracy” inflicts in me a sensation of violent nausea wherein my brow remains furrowed for several minutes and I incur the wrath of the involuntary teeth-mashing that starts in the face of acts of egregious inhumanity. It is a wonder that reading words about others’ horrid behaviors can induce this reaction, even more so, in my experience, than other modes of expression. See for instance these recent tweets by Teju Cole, author of Open City and a book review recently published in the New York Times about Andre Aciman’s new book, Alibis: Essays on Elsewhere.  [An aside before you delve into the small fates that Cole composes on Twitter: it is difficult to accept the recent claims by Noam Chomsky about the “shallow” nature of this medium after reading tweets written by a writer whose words, about the worlds he sees and discovers as well as those he brings together to let readers into the worlds of many others – including that of Aciman’s and the citizens of Lagos – with respect, irony, and a haunting beauty that moves his readers to write back, to interact, to engage, and to wonder aloud.]

Nsofor, 57, head of the vigilantes in Nwangele, entered a girl of four.

21 hours ago

In Justice Yahaya's courtroom in Kano, Hamza got 24 months for child rape, and Sani got 30 for marijuana possession.

21 Oct

Déjà vu. At Mediterranean Park in Abuja, words failed Sunday Nzeh, so he stuck a pen in Sarah Odere’s eye.

21 Oct

If it’s not one thing, it’s your mother. With petrol and matches, Akinkuotu, of Ondo, orphaned himself.

20 Oct

In 140 characters or less, Cole’s distillations of news from Lagos newspapers deliver a punch (to the gut, to the psyche, to the soul), even more potent, perhaps, than the fuller length accounts of the always human and often inhumane acts he chooses to remix. His are words about actions that may go unheard or overlooked, in part simply by virtue of their geographical distance from our daily lives and partially because of the metaphorical and metaphysical walls we build in our attempts to hyper-focus on our immediate and proximal realities. In giving those realities of distanced others a wider and varied audience, Cole brings their happenings, both familiar and strange, through our phones and laptops into our conscious minds; often these remixes, that serve as poignant social commentary on that which might otherwise be accepted as “normal” behaviors and acceptable social practices, demand our attention precisely because of their abhorrence.

But while such visceral reactions, such as the one described above, may be understandable in light of the small fates about which Cole writes, one might wonder why and how the concept of “illiteracy” evokes the same. For context, I turn to a recently published column in the local news website, Philly.com, written by Inquirer columnist Karen Heller titled, “Illiteracy,the scourge of Philadelphia.” In it she correlates “illiteracy” with poverty – and in so doing, borders on accusations of causation – and proceeds to accomplish what she likely set out to do: disrupt social malaise long enough to evoke discomfiture in readers who may otherwise place themselves at a far remove from the realities she asserts.  Presumably, the logic might go, if we taught more kids to decode print in a timely fashion, socioeconomic disparity would be grossly alleviated, if not eliminated altogether. This is not an indictment of Heller; she is writing in the socially acceptable language of literacy that, despite more than ample evidence to the contrary, remains squarely framed as “reading at an eighth-grade level and possessing basic math and computer skills, abilities that more than half a million residents are missing.”  We – that is, researchers, educators, writers in and of multiple media – still have far to go, it seems, before we are able to effectively disrupt the social imaginary on matters related to literacy and language practices.

The distaste, the sheer disdain I have for the word “illiteracy” lies in assumptions that the word carries about all who are unfortunate enough to be viewed through its veil. Although Heller relies on quotes from Judith Rényi and Lisa Schorr, both of whom have been appointed to educational roles within the administration of the city of Philadelphia, her column underscores the wide reach of the topic of literacy as it becomes ensnared with other social ills such as unemployment and incarceration. Heller writes:

"Uncorrected, a lack of literacy remains a lifelong disability. "A person walking around illiterate at 35 is going to be illiterate 50 years from now," Rényi says. That 50 years translates into low-level or no employment, an ongoing dependence on social services, or worse. Most of Philadelphia's prison population reads below the fourth-grade level, demonstrating few resources for legal employment."

Her column, like the writing of other columnists and journalists who will continue to, as they have in the past, inform the collective mind of the populous, carries weight. Perhaps one column of 500 words may not change anything, but a few hundred words here, an evening news story there, a blog post that captures the attention of a political machine eager for an educational soundbyte – an especially dangerous possibility as we enter the next presidential election cycle – and suddenly we may find ourselves on the precipice of another No Child Left Behind. Teachers' hands and tongues become tied when, as a nation, we are prone to follow and vote for a catchy slogan over what may be jarring prose. Words matter.

Children and adults walk into classrooms prepared to learn and too often they are castigated for what they lack; so all-consuming must be this practice of judgment and evaluation that it is a wonder any learning happens at all in schools and other institutions of purported learning. In seeking to teach, educators are steered away from the education already thriving in the lives of their students. If we change nothing else – that is, if we continue to strive for print proficiency in children and all adults, adhere to common content and communicative standards, while navigating the tricky waters of an increasingly inexplicable testing culture (clearly hell-bent on ensuring its own existence above all else) – but remove “illiteracy” from our vocabularies of categorization, then we will have made a significant change. To view someone as “illiterate” is not merely a neutral or socio-demographic designation. It is an act of dehumanization. 

Words matter. The word “illiteracy” matters. And insofar as “illiteracy” will continue to inflict educational and psychic damage – and keep the proverbial wheels squarely situated in slippery mud – a simple shift toward literacies can provide openings for understanding the literate lives and the meaning-full existences of students, older and newer, toward new starting points that are more likely to yield "outcomes" that the warriors against "illiteracy" claim to desire.

Perhaps this is better expressed as a small fate:

Angel told stories to anyone who listened. His teachers insisted they couldn’t teach him or hear his words unless they were written down.

ethnography forum 2012: focus on digital discourses

i have fond memories associated with the ethnography forum. it was the venue where, as a relatively new master's student, i first presented an academic paper based on my involvement in an adult literacy practitioner inquiry group. and it is the venue where i have brought my own graduate students so that they, too, could experience a gentle yet generative entry into the discourses of academic presentation. held on the last weekend in february each year, the forum has a rich tradition of bringing history together with innovation in the domain of ethnographic research. and the 2nd day of the annual two-day conference is dedicated to a focus on teacher research and the often illuminating work of educators and those who assume a practitioner role in the space of research and inquiry. and almost without exception, the plenary speakers have consistently pushed to the fore those threads that start to bud as q&a sessions spill over into the hallways of all four years of the school where i spent many hours, days, and years. this year looks to be following in the same direction with a conference theme that promises to be stimulating and groundbreaking, and invited speakers each of whom embodies a unique mix of passion for the work, innovative scholarship, pedagogical creativity, and eloquence. be sure to check it out!

exciting new direction for the penn annual ethnography in education forum. the theme: Digital Discourses: Education and Ethnography in the 21st Century

proposals due: october 1st

a bit about the theme:

Technology and electronic media today are developing faster than ever, and change the ways we communicate, teach, learn and research. We now live in a digital world where new forms of interactions, social relationships, and identities are generated, thus transforming the very meaning of education. Learning and educating now occur in contexts shaped by Facebook, Smart Phones, Texting, Twitter, online learning, and Skyping—creating new resources and new challenges to our educative worlds. One now needs to draw on ever more diverse semiotic resources when traversing across different virtual and real spaces. As ethnographic researchers, our toolkit has greatly expanded: our briefcase-sized tape recorders of the past have been replaced by pocket-sized digital recorders, smart technology, hand-held video recorders, and online chatting from opposite corners of the globe. These tools have opened up greater possibilities for ethnographically capturing and exploring digital discourses and also for collaboration among ethnographers from a distance. Reciprocally, ethnographic and qualitative research provides keen analytical tools to capture and understand the complex and vibrant realities in which fast-changing technology affects the lives of students and teachers.

fantastic plenary speakers:
Angela Reyes, Hunter College
John Jackson, University of Pennsylvania
Linda Christensen, Lewis & Clark College
Glynda Hull, University of California, Berkeley

Complete details here

exciting new special issues

1. this friday, a special issue of the Journal of Negro Education will be launched with the following theme: Preparing Teachers to Teach Black Students; Preparing Black Students to Become Teachers

the volume is guest co-edited by my friend and colleague yolanda sealey-ruiz (along with chance lewis) and includes a wide array of articles that take up questions related to the teaching and learning lives of black students across contexts, their education narratives, and possible education futures.

2. the recently published special issue of English Teaching: Practice and Critique on: Literacy(ies) and the Body  guest edited by another friend and colleague Stephanie Jones (along with Kerryn Dixon and James Albright)

articles include an exploration of embodied literacies, how bodies are read and what that has to do with education, and a piece on performing critical literacy (written by the very thoughtful and exceptionally observant elisabeth johnson)

3. another special issue bringing an exploration of bodies together with geographies is found in the journal Emotion, Space and Society titled: Emotional Geographies of Education -- edited by jane kenway and deborah youdell (whose work i continue to be enamored of and blown away by)

these articles draw on theories and metaphors of geographies and spaces to bring forth new sites of teaching and learning, under-appreciated or less visible contours of how we live and experience education.

my "letteracies" -- installment 4

over the past several months, i had forgotten to post this last installment. as i read through it now i am struck only by one lasting thought: how precious words can be as a marker of a moment in time. and perhaps bound up in this observation is also the significance of audience, of someone or a few someones who permeate our minds as we compose a text, who infuse our compositions with a small smile or a belly laugh, whose presence pushes us to write to completion, who give our writing purpose and urgency. this is, then, a blanket thank you for the audiences i have had the pleasure of writing to and with and hope to continue a dialogue with in the months and years to come...

and so, without further mediation, the last installment:


8.21.93

…
Getting back to the Taj Mahal: it was beautiful. That’s it. As much as I always wanted to see it, I never really wanted to go in – or go very close for that matter. I don’t know why exactly. Perhaps because actually going in would cause the Taj to lose some of its mystique and enigmatic charm… and it did. Thinking back now it seems almost unreal that I was there. In fact this whole month has just been, what seems like, a big blur. But, all that’s not to say that this isn’t a truly magnificent piece of architecture. Actually it’s more than that. it’s a symbol of the magnitude of Shah Jahan’s love for his wife. And, well, that right there is nothing short of absolutely beautiful. It’s even better because such a symbol exists in a country where, traditionally, love isn’t as widely shown or publicized.

People often say patience is a virtue. This couldn’t be truer. But just as there is virtue in being patient, there is virtue in being content, hence contentment, too, is a virtue. The lack of this can be a deadly thing. This of course doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t strive to better yourself knowledge-wise, spiritually, and internally, for there is always room for improvement and learning. I just mean that always wanting what other people have or never being satisfied unless on has as much of more than others is not healthy at all and can be damaging to both the person who thinks this way and the recipient of such behavior.

…

I hate jealousy. I hate manipulation. I hate arrogance. I hate people taking advantage of others. I hate lying. I hate cheating. I hate meanness. I hate fakes. I hate corruption. I hate prejudice. I hate superficiality. I hate people who aren’t what they portray themselves to be. I hate hypocrites. I hate myself for not seeing people for what/who they really are in the first place. I hate jealousy.

8.24.93

As I’m writing now I’m sitting on my bed at home, in my room, with my back against the “unfinished wall,” listening to the jazz station, hearing a fly have repeated encounters with different objects in the room. It’s good to be home and, as usual, it’s hell to be home.

…

I saw my friends last night. It felt good to laugh like that again.

…

Did you ever have so many thoughts to write down that you couldn’t do it because there were just too many and they were all just fragmented thoughts anyway? Well, that’s what’s happening to now, and has been for quite a while. It’s fun just thinking them though.

Well, I’m sure that this proved to be an interesting, and probably tedious, piece of writing to read and if you got this far you definitely deserve a 3 Musketeers bar. I’ll end this “saga” just by wishing you a good year and thanking you for just … being you :)

…

my "letteracies" -- installment 3

this penultimate installment of excerpts from the india chronicles has a bit of a smorgasbord feel to it. i wonder what a journey across space and time does to an almost 18-year-old. by "does" i mean both the effect on an older adolescent's sense of self as well as the cultivation of an affect and aesthetic of self. how do encounters with multiple others, and the unfamiliar readings of oneself by others, shape a sense of self? and all the while that these encounters are happening and musings are coming in and out of focus, the chronicles putter along with a dual audience in mind -- the intended reader as well as the writer, herself. the pale green steno paper on which these words were scribbled, sometimes with haste and other times with deliberate script, are suggestive of a narrative not only being told but also one being made in real time.

8.7.199X

…

I had a fascinating dream last night. I wrote down what I could concretely remember and I’d explain it but it’s confusing, even for me. More than the actual events of my dream, I remember the feelings – both emotions and physical – that occurred. Is there any real value worth giving to dream analysis? I’ve always heard that dreams are symbols of something. Are they?

i've been thinking a lot about aesthetics and literacies -- about how we feel when we engage with or encounter a text, even a text such as a dream. about how texts and related artifacts stay with us. how they linger long after the moment of encounter. how memory shapes them into the recesses of our minds, pushes them deep into our bodies, waiting for the right occasion or trigger to release them back into our consciousness. it is akin to the connection others have with smells or sounds; for me, it has always been words. i remember how i felt when my 2nd grade teacher insisted on mispronouncing my name even after i had meekly corrected her for the umpteenth time; she insisted on rhyming the 2nd syllable of my name with the word "with" when i desperately wished for her to realize its aural kinship to the word "teeth." 

and i sometimes get lost when the words of another hold me in place while the conversation moves along, leaving me holding my thoughts in quiet as the world rushes forward. like when i was told long ago that my face registered on it the hundreds of fleeting flashes of thought as i listened intently to people in dialogue, taking in their words and gestures and formulating a measured response. whenever a passer-by encourages me to "smile!" or reminds me that "it's not so bad!" as my face contorts when lost in thought. and in those moments, those words come rushing back; i had never had anyone read my face before nor has anyone done so since.

8.8.199X

…

OK, still the eighth of August. We finished packing. Before that, though, j asked who I was writing to. i, looking at the first page, said that it must be a generic letter because it wasn’t addressed to anyone – all it says is “Hi!” so I said I was writing to you. Then she asked if it was a letter or if I was writing a book! I simply told her that writing to you was like writing in a diary, only better. It’s like having a sounding board. Somehow, when I write things down I feel better; when I write them to you, I not only feel better but I can think clearer. And besides, I like writing to you – above all else, it’s wonderfully fun!

this passage reminds me of a quote imprinted on the side of a mug given to me by a high school teacher who i adored, and about whom these particular words by eleanor roosevelt ring quite true, "Many people will walk in and out of your life, but only true friends will leave footprints in your heart." i am reminded, also, of what another friend said about the ideas and words and meanings we carry with us. friendship is that, i suppose. we shift just a little bit with each encounter, but some change us forever. i'm thinking of people, themselves, as well as the words they share with us. and the stories they invite us -- move us -- to share with them.

8.12.199X

I begin this passage not just as a citizen of the world and earnest observer of life, but as one who has visited the site of one of the wonders of the world: The Taj Mahal. It was strange actually going there, though.

last week i attended one of three racial literacy roundtables being held at tc, coordinated by the lovely yolanda and a group of earnest and thoughtful graduate students. one of the facilitators for the evening ventured forth a story by way of introduction to the evening's theme of stereotypes. (the word immediately takes me back to a moment from my childhood when i first heard the word "gandhi" used as an insult hurled toward me... and i was confused then, as i remain now, as to why the name of this icon of non-violence would be insulting to me. ah, youthful ignorance!) this young women noted that it was only upon entering graduate school that she realized that all of her friends were just like her, they looked just like her, shared her life experiences. so, when it became my turn to introduce myself, i wondered aloud, whether we don't all look for a glimpse of familiarity when we connect -- not only within presumed "sameness" but also across differences.  that is, might we not see something familiar in someone who does not share our phenotypic makeup and yet be "just like us?" and perhaps i am keenly aware of this as most of the people who have and continue to leave footprints in my heart look nothing like me, but they are my twin skin, nevertheless.

my "letteracies" -- installment 2

what is the impetus to put pen to paper, or these days to type in the key of a letter? do we resist because we don't have time? or do we assume that our recipient, whomever he or she may be, can't or won't make time for such trivialities? have we lost our ability to render ourselves vulnerable, not only to people in our lives, but to our very selves? are we afraid that if every minute isn't spent with just the slightest hint of suffering and laboriousness, that we ought to feel guilt; rather than creating the spaces for unpredictability, exploration, aimlessness that we (as adults) and certainly that children and youth so desperately need? i think we're just all a bit terrified of looking foolish...

8.1.199X

Happy August! I’m back at my grandmother’s house in Madras. We finished the southern leg of our India trip without too much of a problem. All in all I’d say it went well. … in about 1 month and 3 days I will be all moved in at Penn; for that reason alone I can’t wait to get home. That and the fact that I can mail you this thing, which I predict will be a pretty hefty package by the time I finish!

given my constant attention to time, temporality, and location in these excerpts, perhaps it is not a surprise that theories of space/time captured my imagination from the first read.  references to college are peppered throughout the pages of the chronicle, suggesting a restlessness that is to be expected of an adolescent during the summer before leaving home for college.

8.5.199X

Ahoy, again! Or actually I should say “All aboard!” or something like that, because at this very moment I’m aboard the Corumendal Express en route to Calcutta. It is about 9:15pm and we’ve been on the train for over twelve hours. But we have air conditioned sleeping compartments, so it’s a whole “lotta” fun! It wasn’t more than an hour ago that tears were streaming down my face in reaction to the conclusion of one o the best books I have ever read, “The Prince of Tides.” The last thirty of so pages were absolute torture, but I loved every minute of it I haven’t had a book move me like this one did in a long time. it felt good to know and experience the beauty of a language that could evoke such true feeling and emotion. Perhaps I’m wrong in saying language. A more accurate statement would be that knowing that a contemporary author like Pat Conroy could have such a mastery of language that really and truly clutches your gut – well, it both strengthens and illuminates the aura of literature in the world today.

I just finished listening to some guy literally yelp the words “Love and happiness” over and over as accompaniment to a beautiful Sandborne sax. But that’s not the point’ it’s what he was saying, rather than how, that inspired this next passage.

Ok, let’s take these words into perspective: LOVE and HAPPINESS.

What the hell does that mean?!?!?!?

Love. I wrote an essay on this same topic. Now perhaps you’re wondering what credentials I had that gave me license to write about this great wonder of wonder. Well I had, still have, and always will have the one trait that I share with about four and half billing other creatures that inhabit the earth: the trait of being human and having the capacity to love. The trait that not only allows me to feel, but to express to the world these feelings – if I so choose.

So I embarked on a voyage that required self-examination to great degrees on my part. As the essay took shape, bit by bit, I realized that love really is more than one thing, that it is many things, and that I was one hell of a lucky person to have even experienced the different kinds of love I had [experienced] in these seventeen years, ten months, and 25 days (and counting) of my life. Granted that one of those [kinds] did not include the one thing always linked to love: romantic love. But I’m beginning to see that everything comes in its own time; besides I had so much else to write about.

i marvel that i thought someone would want to read these words, these crazy and meandering musings. this tablet was nestled in a box alongside dozens of other letters that dated back to my middle school days. i had french pen pals -- bruno and madeleine -- and exchanged letters of varying length with friends i would meet for a day, some with whom i attended school, and others i met in a month-long residential program during the summer after my junior in high school -- where i met my friend L as well as my now-husband. some envelopes are decorated with artwork, others -- especially the ones sent to me by my younger sister -- were adorned with stickers and doodles and last minute messages hastily scribbled onto available blank space of envelopes.

8.6.199X

11:45pm is the time as I say hello again from Calcutta. It’s hard to believe that I lived here for three years of my life. My dad used to describe the city to me at the time when he was growing up. I knew it wasn’t the poshest of locations, but I didn’t expect such an onslaught of smog, pollution, and more people!! I always pictured Calcutta as very black and white – that’s probably because of all the black and white photographs I’ve seen of my dad’s childhood.

We visited some friends of my parents, who still live in the same apartment building. (The guy was dad’s childhood friend and had lived in the same apt. for 54 years!) Then we saw a lady who supposedly was my friend. Mom said that I’d spent more time at her house that at home; their flat is right next to ours. Both she and the previous couple I mentioned had last seen me when I was 3 ½ -4 years old. Boy were they shocked when they found out who I was!

as i read my old letters from my friends, and as i sit with the chronicle that was never sent, i am reminded of how much meaning comes through in the space of correspondence. such was one of the great joys in the story of the "goat on a cow" (which was recently re-interpreted as an amazing feat of dance choreography), in which the discovery of a stack of letters along the side of a road led to the unveiling of a relationship and identities once thought long forgotten. the finding of letters, whether they be familiar or new discoveries, is reminiscent of a near-sacred moment -- the opening up and peering into of the middle of a conversation, of a self being crafted and gently unfolding as the words create lines that take up pages. once i got past the initial cringing that is bound to occur as the inner critic rears her ugly head, i was able to see connections to some of the uncertainties, frustrations, earnestness, confusions, and emotional dilemmas that i see echoed in my conversations with many young people today. and perhaps more than anything, i was struck by the acts of making public aspects of a very inner and private dialogue. they made me wonder if and how youth are carving out those spaces in their quotidian discursive activities today -- where? how? with and for whom?

installment 3 to come shortly...
installment 1 here

being in tune with oneself

as i began this post several days ago, i only had a sense of where the story would go. i have an image in my mind of a young man looking at me with incredulity as i was hanging out in the afterschool program where my research team and i spend a few afternoons a week facilitating an arts and digital literacies project.  on a recent tuesday, we were continuing some work with collages that we had begun the week before. collaging is one in a long line of expressive practices that we have been incorporating into this series of workshops, that has included designing movie posters, camera work, reading and scripting lines of a play, among other practices. i first met the boy who i'm thinking of -- i'll call him derek -- a few weeks back. when i was introduced to him as a professor by a graduate students, who is also part of the team, derek immediately referred to me as "the OG." i liked him instantly :)  he wondered aloud what my relationship was, in terms of power and authority, to eric, who he referred to the man in charge. admittedly, eric does appear wise beyond his years and is a founding member of this project, but we both laughed at derek's characterization of his presumed age as he is almost the youngest member of our team.

but i digress... last week, as i walked into the program, derek announced my entrance by noting that "triple OG is here." (when eric entered a short while later, derek noted, "here comes double OG.") in addition to reminding me so much of one of the boys who was a part of my dissertation project group -- cyrus -- derek's countenance, wickedly shy smile that breaks into a grin, surprise when i call him by his name (and that i know his name at all) -- all of these little glimpses suggest some of the many layers that comprise the life of this one young man.

last tuesday, we were discussing events around the world -- and reminding ourselves to remember that the world is both local and global (and all the lovely bits in between) -- with the help of photographs depicting images of the devastation following the earthquake in japan, somali refugees in tunisia, citizen soldiers taking arms in libya... derek, who was sitting next to me, launched his body nearly out of his chair on more than 4 or 5 separate occasions. he was still very much engaged and participating, as his writing and conversational contributions from that day reflect, but he needed or took moments to swing himself away. i described this interaction in an email to a friend this way:

"I think... of this week's discussion with some young people whose great desire to be heard was palpable; a hand laid gently on a shoulder was all it took to invite a young man to join our discussion. This in contrast to a similar moment in classroom where delayed participation may be read, in a moment, as disengagement, and the weight of many previous moments of impatient judgments flash like a halo of garish neon signs."

in sharing this moment, i was recalling the suggestion made by jay lemke who notes that "moments add up to lives," and wondering about the many moments that adolescents experience in schools that rush by without attention, and yet build up with the residue of false or lowered expectations, disappointments, sacrificing relationships for content coverage, reinforced messages that kids must fit schools and decidedly not the other way around.

while i was thinking about all of this, and wondering how derek's sense of self - his very personhood - might be supported, i received an email from my friend e, whose beloved piano had just been seen by a tuner after a very long time. because of age (close to a 100 yo) among other reasons, the piano, e wrote, might only ever "be in tune with itself" and not, as it were, perfectly tuned. her email and the turn of phrase made me think instantly of derek. and cyrus. and ed. and travis. and brite. and christian. and eric. and myself. all were adolescents at some point, either now or in the past, who may not have been seen for who they are, only for what and who they are not.

to be in tune with oneself -- a formidable task in it own right! how often do we hear adults striving for a sense of balance and harmony, and yet why do we eschew these same qualities in young people who have not conformed to norms of behavior, practice, action, performance, engagement? the pursuit of being in tune with oneself may be where human flourishing comes alive and perhaps lies in direct contrast to an insistence on developmental markers of identity, progress -- redolent of what varenne and mcdermott artfully illustrate in successful failure about the social construction of labels that emerge out of judgment of a child's lack of being in tune with others, even while she may be perfectly in tune with herself... capable of playing, in key, with those around her.

cme: representations of women and girls (snagfilms collection)

Watch more free documentaries

Seeking provocations and reclaiming the numbers game

"And the time came when the risk to remain tight in a bud became more painful than the risk it took to blossom." -- Anaïs Nin

In she walked. Already I was braced. And was not disappointed. She unleashed her net of despair, insistent on the savior story; the bootstraps-blindside-redemption narrative.

I sat, with jaw clenched and teeth gnashed, interjecting occasionally when her questions led her to draw absurd conclusions from the responses. She already knew the story she wanted to tell: her questions felt like artifice.

But my anger and hurt/surprise at what seemed like a missed opportunity to tell a compelling story presented an opportunity for tremendous pride. I watched with a full heart as a young man of 20 years held his ground and conveyed his convictions with a resounding calm. I was reminded, by him and familiar and new graduate students, that I am truly part of a team of like-minded, earnest, creative others. The "risk to blossom" must be taken.

This woman, this reporter, presented a provocation -- a reminder that our work is about creating the spaces to cultivate and nurture forth the creative capacities of the youth with whom we work. I am naïve if I forget that the histories and institutional affiliations of "our" youth -- who are involved with the justice system - will be of great interest to distant others. But how might we communicate, effectively and passionately, that these are normal, everyday, engaged, playful, thoughtful young people who are not only so much more than their institutional labels, they often defy those labels entirely.

I was describing this year's project to a former student on the steps in between buildings this week. She noted that in her recent experience working for an academic research center, research like ours was not what was being funded or sought out by the funding agencies. They want numbers. So let's give them numbers:
- the frequency of smiles between youth and adults, participants and facilitators
- how long it takes someone to feel comfortable enough to offer a peer encouragement
- the average number of affirmations and to whom they are directed
- how often and how many genre risks a young person takes - in their composing, consuming, and distribution of texts
- how many, within a given educational space, feel a sense of belonging

And let us reclaim outcomes in the realm of participation - real participation and not merely the behaviors that have been sanctioned by "experts" -- and look for value added in how youth contribute to shaping the curriculum of the educational spaces in which they participate; of course, this assumes educators will allow them this invitation. Could we imagine outcomes that sought greater humaneness among members of a classroom community? Or the mere recognition that one is a member of a community...

Reclamation of the stuff that seems to attract and affirm the monetary risks funders are willing to take; actions that leverage the ideas that capture the broader social imagination by transforming it with tales of fantastical imaginaries -- this is the new frontier of socially conscious, morally committed, pedogically inspired research about the literate lives of adolescents.

new book about harlem, youth, and multimodal literacy

Harlem on our minds: Place, race, and the literacies of urban youth
by Valerie Kinloch
Teachers College Press, 2009

Discourses of youth, gentrification, place, space, and literacies converge beautifully in this volume, collaboratively constructed by Valerie Kinloch and youth researchers, who explored changes going on in Harlem through a variety of modes, discursive interactions, and ongoing inquiry.

Definitely explore and purchase for your own reading, or to read with youth, undergraduate and graduate students interested the complicated intersections of identity, place, power, and narrative discussed in this book.


From the publisher:

In her new book, Valerie Kinloch investigates how the lives and literacies of youth in New York City’s historic Harlem are affected by public attempts to gentrify the community. Kinloch draws connections between race, place, and students’ literate identity through collaborative interviews between youth, teachers, longtime black residents, and their new white neighbors. Harlem on Our Minds is a participatory action narrative that makes emerging theories of social ecology real for the high-school English classroom. Vividly drawn lessons show how teachers can engage urban youth in school-based literacy, by linking canonical text, particularly of the Harlem renaissance, to current events. Centered on the literacy stories of two African American youth and their peers, this book for our times:

• Showcases the multimodal literacy practices of urban youth through photos, writing samples, student-designed research projects, and more.
• Weaves in multiple voices and perspectives through response pieces by project participants, local teachers, graduate students, and a community activist.
• Features teaching strategies and reflection points in each chapter.

bar code art

taking something meant to be invisible or what goes unnoticed and repurposing it by (re)imagining it as a modality for creating art. fantastic!

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"are heels oppressing or empowering?" -> what passes for 'debate' over morning coffee...

bio-anthropologist versus (talk show host + magazine editor + sexist stand-in co-host) = very difficult to watch morning segment.

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storying and the storied

last week was strange for a number of reasons, not the least of which involved a meeting of faculty that was not a faculty meeting, or a department meeting, or any other configuration of faculty members who convene for largely administrative purposes.  we had convened voluntarily, in response to an invitation to inquire together about the nexus of globalization, education, and citizenship.  my feelings can be summed up in the tweet i twittered as i walked to my office after leaving my colleagues with whom i felt like i had engaged in something unique:

finding my way back to play12:05 PM Sep 24th from TwitterBerry

we were asked by our colleague and facilitator to reflect on a moment of transculturalism or transnationalism that we had experienced, either in our recent or distant or anywhere-in-between past. and here's where the strange quotient increases - the first story that popped into my mind was the great dosa tale of 2nd grade. i will write that story down at some point - i've certainly shared it verbally enough times! - but the story for right now is about why my mind went there, to that particular moment when i was seven. a moment that, by all means, could only be characterized as mortifying and emotionally scarring.  but given the previous events of last week, this tale became reframed in my mind as evocative of something different: a profound moment of self-definition and inquiry into identity that resonates with all subsequent invitations to inquiry and identity work...

i began to think about my grandmother early last week.  at the end of class tuesday night i gave a brief preview of the book we'll discuss during the next class, the magical life of long tack sam. the author of the text, and documentary filmmaker, ann marie fleming, composed the book and a film of the same name following from her inquiry into her family's history and learning of her great-grandfather's magical life as a world renown acrobat and magician.  the texts are worth more than a few pages of reflection themselves, but i'll just say here that in both form and content, fleming's storying of her family history evokes images of transnational migration, strength, personal and collective triumph, war, family, and peace among many others.  as i offered a brief preview in class, inviting us to attend to both form and content and the collective meanings fleming offers the reader, i continued to think about my own acts of personal storying, which flourished when i was in graduate school and which have largely diminished in the five years since...


the following day, i found my way back to a public library.  i was so moved by the realization that i blogged about the at-once new and familiar rush of emotions that swept over me.  i was again transported to a practice so dominant in my youth; to a space and structure that held deep personal meaning for how i made sense of myself in the then-present, and how i imagine my younger self now. i tweeted about the boy who shared a table with me, and allowed me to understand another dimension of public library life:

hair aflame w/a mop of orange. eyes focused on math puzzle hw. in silence, until rendezvous w/mom. she asks abt his day; he beams. #twitpoem6:54 PM Sep 23rd from TwitterBerry


so in our faculty seminar, when presented with the invitation to engage in sustained inquiry - with thought and emotion, with storied reflection - about the intersections across otherwise banal terms such as globalization, education, and citizenship, my mind immediately flooded with images, feelings, details; i understood what fleming meant when she concluded her film by saying "memory is magic" and noting in writing that "history is relatives."


i have a working title for my inquiry: a is for assimilation.  there is a simplicity in that phrase that captures the nuances of learning to speak english from my floppy haired neighbor; constantly negotiating a very full identity dance card; pursuing language and literacy-based study in my studies and professional life; confronting the vestiges of my own identity work, begun nearly thirty years ago with trepidation and which is still very much under construction.


it isn't often when multiple strands of inquiry align, but when they do like they seem to have recently, the effect is awe-some. i concluded my week by attending a screening of fleming's film, originally released in 2003 but being rescreened to celebrate a new exhibit at the moca.  during the q&a, fleming mentioned that she began research for her film 10 years after her grandmother, the daughter of long tack sam, had died.  this year marks the tenth anniversary of my paternal grandmother's death; the person for whom i was named and with whom i shared a bedroom for the first several years of my life.   i've begun tweeting questions that i would have asked her if i had thought to do so at the time (#q4gma).  i think about the way she is storied in family lore, and how storied her siblings, parents, and ancestors.  hers was an unexpected transnational narrative that she negotiated for the last twenty years of her life.  so when i find myself undoubtedly mired in writing, revision, and analysis already on the schedule for the next several months, i will rejoice in the occasional opportunities to let my mind explore, making the familiar strange again, and play within the loosely facilitated structure of a seminar... just like grad school.  (i even became a bit giddy when reading and questions to guide our thinking were assigned...) 

this time, i'll take my namesake along for the ride. 


...

public libraries

going to our public library was a ritual for me when i was a kid growing up in a suburban new jersey town.  almost weekly, either parent or the parent of one of my friends would drive a carload of us kids to the (what seemed to me then to be) sprawling free public library campus, which also housed a version of "safety town" - a mock town where busloads of kids could spend an afternoon learning about traffic safety from "officer friendly."  on the green lawn out front sat two bronzed figures back to back, one engrossed in reading and the other saying something over his back to his companion.  sometimes i would sit next to them with a book of my own while i waited for my ride or others to finish up inside.

i never left the building with any less than the maximum number of books you could take out at once.  if it wasn't an armload, then i clearly had wasted a visit.  slowly, i would venture from the children's section into the main section of the library, and this would bring me indescribable joy.  once i got the hang of the dewey decimal system, i would look up topics in the card catalog just to prove i could find it.  astronomy, botany, civil war, women's rights, mythology... the card catalog was like a choose-your-own-adventure story that never led to the same place twice.  up stairs and down the elevator, books in hand.  no matter where the journey led, however, i always landed back in the far corner of the children's section.  there, the tables were round and wide and could accommodate books of all shapes and sizes.  i liked to spread them out - a practice in which i still i engage - like a painter assembling her paints before delving into them to construct that afternoon's perfect story portrait.  i think about the multilayered narrative that capucine weaves in this video and feel a kinship to what might have been going on in her mind to bring those threads together.

i felt some of the same energy and magic when i wandered into a different public library earlier this afternoon.  i hadn't been inside one in a very long time.  i was instantly aware of how unfamiliar this environment was to me, even as the sensibility of the concrete structure was inviting.  i had become so used to working in academic libraries, coffee shops, and my office, that i found myself unaccustomed to the ongoing interactions between librarian and the diverse population of patrons; the dialogues about whether the printers were working and where a mom could find some good graphic novels for her 11-year-old.  the librarian had responses for these and many other queries.

i took a seat at a rectangular table on the second floor, presumably near the young adult literature section.  across me was a bookshelf full of graphic novels.  just typing that sentence makes me realize how things and times have changed since i was last actively present in a library - that is, in a library to "use" the library.  a bookshelf full of graphic novels didn't exist even 6 or 7 years ago when i spent nearly every week in or near a library while collecting data for my dissertation with a group of adolescent boys.   librarians, often women, act as sage guides, patient listeners, and occasionally ornery public servants whose buttons have been pushed one too many times.

for a while, i shared my table with a red-headed boy who looked to be no more than 9.  he worked studiously on what appeared to be a math assignment - i'm assuming math based on the pyramid made up of triangles on the worksheet he was writing on.  a group of slightly older girls walked up the stairs together and, leaning on each other like teenage girls tend to do (literally and metaphorically), made their way to the back where the young adult romance and mystery books were.  their dialogue was about which book to check out next, amidst giggles - i probably wouldn't be entirely off base if i guessed they were going toward the twilight display...

there was one other reason i kept bringing my haul back to the children's section of my hometown public library: the giant lion that was propped up against the corner.  i probably couldn't get away with it now, but even as a teenager, i would sit and lean against that lion and read for hours on end.  i was comfortable, in a familiar surrounding, where i had relatively autonomy and authority to manage my own textual explorations. 

i began to remember some of those lessons this afternoon as i watched library patrons, old and mostly young, make their way through this structure.  card catalogs have been replaced with computer kiosks and the library cards and books are read by barcode, but the stuffed animals and large tables remain... signaling a welcome to a new generation of inquiring minds and adventure-seeking storytellers.

---

and on a happy note, relief for the free library of philadelphia ...  for now...

representations of women - film series 1

The Day My God Died

a documentary that chronicles the experiences of young girls from nepal who are trafficked and sold into the child sex trade in bombay