A well-presented consideration of a generations-long problem in education.
A manual for educators to decolonize their classrooms and put the focus on Indigenous cultures.
The author—a direct descendant of Chief Hunter Jack of the N’Quat’qua Nation and a former elementary school principal for the Squamish nation—is a proponent of re-storying education in Canada, which she describes as “a process of dismantling old narratives to rebuild and re-story new narratives to include historically silenced voices in education, to make space for all stories of this place to be told.” Her book is aimed at educators, encouraging them to teach Indigenous history and interact with Indigenous students more authentically. To do this, she argues, educators need to unlearn the colonial framework of education. The book’s eight chapters include a history of how the public education system has failed the Indigenous people (and how to correct that failing), a discussion of how colonialism is manifested in the classroom, and a plan for assessing how these changes are being implemented. The chapter titled “Journey through Education,” in particular, is full of useful information from the author’s personal memories of an education that served to reinforce the colonial point of view to arguments for more Indigenous representation in school curricula to ways in which the grade-school curricula need to be revamped and updated. (This chapter also tackles weighty topics about representation and racism in the classroom.) This is all very heavy material, but the author doesn’t get bogged down. The structure of each chapter—including musical playlists to listen to as you read, a handful of questions for reflection, and a handy list of resources—makes for an easy read, one that not only explores the problems it raises but also offers a range of solutions. All of this combines to give the reader a thorough look at what the author finds lacking in the Canadian education system and the steps that can be taken to help correct it.
A well-presented consideration of a generations-long problem in education.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2024
ISBN: 9781774584965
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Page Two
Review Posted Online: Aug. 1, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A philosophically rich critique of state violence and mass apathy.
An Egyptian Canadian journalist writes searchingly of this time of war.
“Rules, conventions, morals, reality itself: all exist so long as their existence is convenient to the preservation of power.” So writes El Akkad, who goes on to state that one of the demands of modern power is that those subject to it must imagine that some group of people somewhere are not fully human. El Akkad’s pointed example is Gaza, the current destruction of which, he writes, is causing millions of people around the world to examine the supposedly rules-governed, democratic West and declare, “I want nothing to do with this.” El Akkad, author of the novel American War (2017), discerns hypocrisy and racism in the West’s defense of Ukraine and what he views as indifference toward the Palestinian people. No stranger to war zones himself—El Akkad was a correspondent in Afghanistan and Iraq—he writes with grim matter-of-factness about murdered children, famine, and the deliberate targeting of civilians. With no love for Zionism lost, he offers an equally harsh critique of Hamas, yet another one of the “entities obsessed with violence as an ethos, brutal in their treatment of minority groups who in their view should not exist, and self-decreed to be the true protectors of an entire religion.” Taking a global view, El Akkad, who lives in the U.S., finds almost every government and society wanting, and not least those, he says, that turn away and pretend not to know, behavior that we’ve seen before and that, in the spirit of his title, will one day be explained away until, in the end, it comes down to “a quiet unheard reckoning in the winter of life between the one who said nothing, did nothing, and their own soul.”
A philosophically rich critique of state violence and mass apathy.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2025
ISBN: 9780593804148
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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