Reviews for Development African American

The average rating for Development African American based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2007-10-31 00:00:00 Jen Stoner Ellen Cushman, a Professor of English at Northeastern University in Boston, received her Ph.D. in Rhetoric and Composition from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1996. She is also the Dean's Professor of Civic Sustainability and Associate Dean of Academic Affairs, Diversity and Inclusion. Much of Cushman's research focuses on the literacy practices of marginalized peoples and communities. A member of the Cherokee Nation, Cushman (2011) has also examined the hegemony of Anglo-American discourse and its impact on the rhetorical and literate legacy of the Cherokee, particularly regarding the preservation of the Cherokee's language and oral traditions. The Struggle and the Tools: Oral and Literate Strategies in an Inner City Community is the book-length version of Cushman's dissertation, an ethnographic study of the ways in which a marginalized community developed and deployed language strategies in their daily lives in order to negotiate the oppressive structure of social and governmental institutions. Her work follows in the tradition of other composition scholars such as Mike Rose (1989) and Shirley Brice Heath (1983) who pioneered the use of ethnographic methodologies in writing studies, particularly from the critical sociolinguist perspective. Cushman's work (1998) is significant for its emphasis on urban communities and institutional language, which, at the time of her research in the mid-1990s, was an understudied area in composition, linguistic, and educational studies. Her aim was to fill this research gap between institutional or official literate activities and extra-curricular literate practices or "those practices that take place outside the classroom and encompass multiple contexts" of reading and writing events (p. 232). Her overarching research questions are: "What oral and literate skills does institutional language include? And how do individuals learn and acquire these skills?" (p. 97). Cushman wanted to examine how residents navigated the labyrinth-like social services bureaucracy and to identify the ways in which their linguistic choices illustrated the power dynamics of the relationships between residents and "gatekeepers" or institutional representatives such as social workers. The eponymous "struggle" represents, then, the residents' perceptions of how these gatekeepers often "hindered community members' efforts to act for themselves" while the "tools" refers to their actual linguistic strategies (p. x). From January 1993 to June 1996, Cushman conducted her ethnographic fieldwork in Quayville, a fictional name given to Troy, New York where she also attended Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. As part of her participant observation, she began her research as a literacy volunteer at a local community center. In fact, this experience provided one of the earliest challenges to her research project. Shortly after beginning, she was informed by the center's social workers that they expected her to "inform" them about neighborhood households, effectively acting as their spy while compromising her own pledge of confidentiality as an ethnographer and as part of her IRB-approved application (p. 27). She refused, and the social workers then asked to her stop volunteering. Because of the distrust existing between social workers and the community they served, this incident lent more credibility to Cushman among her potential research subjects and allowed her to grow closer to many community members. It allowed her to position herself more effectively as an activist researcher. A key component to activist methodology is reciprocity, the notion that the researcher and research subject engage in a mutually beneficial relationship and that participants are portrayed in "respectful ways while also conveying the texture and complexities of participants' lived conditions" (p. 36). Cushman's break with the community center helped her to avoid perpetuating asymmetrical power relations with Quayville residents. Instead, she built a reciprocal relationship in which time and resources were exchanged to meet one another's goals - i.e., in return for linguistic artifacts such as applications, notes, letters, and journals, Cushman provided her educational expertise and university resources when asked. It was important to her that this research project be "research in praxis," that is that she actively participate in the community under study (p. 28). Specifically, she writes, "I wanted to insure that 1) community members and myself would dialogically arrange mutually beneficial relationships; 2) the goals and analysis of this research would center around social issues salient to their daily struggles; and 3) we would author(ize) together the final written representations of their lives" (p. 26). The notion of co-authorship was followed throughout the work, from asking for and following up with community members' critiques of her drafts and her depictions of themselves and their circumstances to allowing members to choose their own pseudonyms within the text. This approach was especially important for Cushman's study of "code-switching" or the strategic use of Black English vs. White English and the implications of the two dialects for individual and community identity. As Cushman observes, Black English represents solidarity and community as well as a shared sense of otherness in white society; it is used while speaking with friends and peers and in certain public situations. White English, on the other hand, is the prestige dialect used to make a favorable impression upon a gatekeeper or to achieve goals in the wider, dominant society. More importantly, it is the "price of admission into the economic and social mainstream" and, as such, its use risked alienation from the community if members felt that someone was selling out (p. 64). Learning to walk this fine line was an important part of Quayville residents' literate strategies. Adults taught children and learned from an early age themselves that they need to be able to read a situation to adopt the correct verbal and nonverbal cues when dealing with gatekeepers or those with power. Cushman's close relationship with community members allowed her to see up close how that code-switching worked and how the use of either dialect is both practical and subversive. The examinations and close readings of these literacy events provide the best thick descriptions of Cushman's work. People, their circumstances and situations, come to life - their hopes, such as Raejone's college dreams (p. 181), their frustrations, such as Lucy's dealings with the Department of Social Services (p. 3-11; p. 64), and Afriganzia's identity struggle (p. 121). Cushman used critical discourse analysis to analyze these codes as well as community situations and literacy events and artifacts. She explained, "I used critical discourse analysis because, with it, I was able to examine, first, the minute characteristics of user's grammar and semantics; second, the social context in which the language use unfolds; and third, the larger political and ideological assumptions informing each particular language use" (p. 27). Cushman used three levels of analysis for literate exchanges: 1) the social function of linguistic choices; 2) the situational context that "depict the reciprocal relations of the actors in an exchange"; and 3) the ideological assumptions behind participants' language (p. 33-34). These levels represent the sociolinguistic argument that language is essentially performative and both forms and supports ideological social structure. Therefore, these levels of analysis would show how residents and gatekeepers "participate in the social construction of their relation to each other" and how residents' literate strategies are formed, learned, and refined (p. 34). Among the strongest aspects to Cushman's work, and probably a main reason that it has become a modern classic in composition studies is her awareness of the dangers of critical theory and perspectives in assuming a paternalistic or condescending tone towards the people and communities they seek to help. Cushman privileges the voices of her participants. She also disabuses the notion that oppressed people lack a critical awareness of their situation, and the ways in which institutional authority upholds the structure of oppression even as it seeks to "help" them. Quayville's residents are savvy and deliberate in their literate strategies. The Struggle and the Tools was groundbreaking in composition studies for this very reason. However, as celebrated as Cushman's work is in composition and literacy, it is little known in library and information science (LIS) though her methodology and findings have equally strong implications for LIS as well, especially given the impetus towards interdisciplinary and literacy research. The literacy events examined here mirror the information literacy events often studied by LIS researchers such as Sanna Talja, Andrea Baer, and James Elmborg. It only highlights the greater need for more collaboration and conversation between the two disciplinary fields.

Review # 2 was written on 2019-03-12 00:00:00 Luke Tominski I'll follow researcher and author Aaronette M. White's example and begin with my own limitations and biases. I am mostly white, and I am a feminist woman. I chose to read and review this book expressly because I haven't met many black men who call themselves feminists, and I thought Ain't I a Feminist? would help broaden my horizons'and it really did. White's book not only showed me that African American men can be feminists (a conclusion she was more skeptical about than I was), but that many of them are far more evolved in their feminist development than I am. Furthermore, I realized that in making this personal observation in the first paragraph of my review of her book, I am exercising my white privilege and not acting like a very good feminist! Ain't I a Feminist? should prove to be an equally eye-opening and empowering read for anyone interested in the interconnectedness of oppressions, the awakening of social consciousness, the call to activism, and the impact of sexism on children and families. Ain't I a Feminist? is the result of feminist psychologist and social scientist White's in-depth, in-person interviews with self-identified feminist African American men. Through the course of her research, White learned that even men who had grown up in abusive households and become abusers themselves could'through friendships with feminist women, gay and bisexual men, and through ongoing self-reflection'become committed and effective womanists, feminists, and anti-sexist and anti-violence activists. The book is organized according to common themes White found running through the men's narratives, and is enriched with stories told in her subjects' own words. Their stories reveal wounding run-ins with sexism and power, life-changing turning points, and inspiring forays into activism and critical self-reflection. White's skepticism and her own self-criticism made her results feel all the more convincing. It was heartening to see the number of negative experiences that were transformed into positive action, and to see the arcs of the men's lives as they moved from ignorance to activism. This book made me want to take action, as the men in the book took action, to struggle with and work against my own privilege. Review by Ari Moore