Follow nine young people as they move from racially isolated elementary and middle schools to a diverse – yet internally segregated – neighborhood high school.
In this illustrative book, author Rebecca Alexander draws from the lived experiences of the young residents of “Glenwood”, a historically Black suburb, and “Parkside”, the historically white, wealthy community just across the freeway. Focusing on an anonymised location in California during the sub-prime crisis, the book explores issues of segregation and gentrification in US schools and communities, while looking at how youth and families work to produce, contest, question, resist, and engage racialized space in and beyond schools.
Reframing (de)segregation work through the lens of dispossession, displacement, borders and frontiers to highlight the historic and ongoing labor of young people, families, and communities in the context of persistent dispossession, the author contextualises experience with theory to demonstrate how concepts in social and educational structures impact real lives.
About the author
Dr Janise Hurtig is an educational anthropologist and community educator and researcher. Her teaching and writing take place at the intersections of adult and popular education, gender and feminism, community development and social change in the Chicago area and in Venezuela. Janise received her Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Michigan. She is currently part-time faculty in De Paul University’s School for Continuing and Professional Studies, coordinator of the Community Writing Project, and an adult educator at the Howard Area Community Center.