"Through honest and powerful vignettes, Jewell’s latest stitches together a collective memoir of formative experiences of educational racism and American schooling. Unapologetic and unflinching: a critical read." — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“[Jewell's] approach fuses the nonfiction vulnerability of memoir and the pointed, data-driven purpose of a treatise into a radical reimagining of the societal role schools play. A compelling read that persistently challenges commonly held perceptions of learning." — Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books (starred review)
“Thought-provoking. The text is accessible for teens to read on their own but would also be an excellent choice for group reads. The narrative is informative, sympathetic, and open, with the feel of a mentor pulling back the curtain. Back matter includes further reading [and] references for each chapter.” — School Library Journal (starred review)
“[The contributors’] shared message is the same: kids deserve better, and students need to know they can stand up for their rights. The content offers much to ponder.” — Booklist
“A reflective validator for some, a view into a different experience for others, and an entry point for both connection and correction for readers overall.” — Nic Stone, #1 New York Times bestselling author of How to Be a (Young) Antiracist
“The powerful tradition of Baldwin’s loving call to critique echoes in this brilliant [book]. A rare gift that inspires, challenges, and dares us to ‘envision what freedom in schools could be.’ I want to share this book with every student and educator in America.” — Brendan Kiely, New York Times bestselling author of The Other Talk: Reckoning with Our White Privilege
“Tiffany Jewell has a gift for getting to the guts of the thing with startling brevity and clarity. An essential book which examines not just the ‘why’ of racism but the deeply important ‘how.’” — Olivia A. Cole, author of The Truth About White Lies
“A searing, gut-punching gift of a [book]. A poignant and powerful affirmation of our shared humanity [with] multiple opportunities for honest and meaningful teaching and learning in and out of the classroom, for conversation among peers, between generations, and across boundaries. Essential.” — Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich, coauthor of The Sun Does Shine: An Innocent Man, A Wrongful Conviction, and the Long Path to Justice
“Although written for young people, Everything I Learned About Racism I Learned in School is a masterclass for teachers and parents on how to recognize inequities in the classroom and more importantly, how to begin confronting and course correcting generations of systemic racism in education.” — Christine Platt, author and literacy advocate
“Equip[s] young people with the tools they need to be actively antiracist.” — TIME on This Book Is Anti-Racist
“Help[s] young people learn in a gentle, thoughtful way.” — USA Today on This Book Is Anti-Racist
“Clear, compelling language. Thoughtful, energizing.” — Publisher Weekly (starred review) on This Book Is Anti-Racist
“Has something for all young people no matter what stage they are at in terms of awareness.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred review) on This Book Is Anti-Racist
"Successfully combines personal experience and social and historical issues." — School Library Journal (starred review) on This Book Is Anti-Racist
"I know firsthand the profound impact [Tiffany Jewell's] teachings have. Now young people everywhere can benefit." — Jarrett J. Krosoczka, National Book Award Finalist and author of Hey, Kiddo, on This Book Is Anti-Racist
★ 03/01/2024
Gr 8 Up—A thought-provoking combination of memoir and anthology exploring institutionalized racism. In straight-forward language, Jewell (This Book Is Anti-Racist) describes her encounters with racism from elementary school to college, most times not obvious or overt but still insidious and dehumanizing. Able to pass as white, she and her twin sister were able to enjoy the privileges of being tracked into honor classes while witnessing the ways darker-skinned students of color were shut out. She discusses the biased curriculum and standardized tests and the focused military recruitment of BIPOC folks—all factors that cause students to internalize what avenues are open to some and closed off to others. Her thoughtful personal essays are enhanced by statistics and graphs, grounding her anecdotes with undeniable evidence. Entries from other authors, such as Randy Ribay, Torrey Maldonado, and Joanna Ho, are interspersed between Jewell's autobiographical chapters. These poems and essays flesh out the volume, offering more layers to the book's thesis—they touch upon religion, sexuality, and class, and how those elements are often tied into how young people are racialized. The text is accessible for teens to read on their own but would also be an excellent choice for group reads. The narrative is informative, sympathetic, and open, with the feel of a mentor pulling back the curtain. The copy is enhanced by an effective use of bold type and large font. Back matter includes further reading, references for each chapter, and contributor biographies. VERDICT Purchase this for all collections serving teens.—Shelley M. Diaz
★ 2023-10-07
Through honest and powerful vignettes, Jewell’s latest stitches together a collective memoir of formative experiences of educational racism and American schooling by people of the global majority.
Anchored by the author’s narrative of navigating school as a “light-skinned Black biracial cis-female” in a working-class neighborhood of a city in New York state, the work incorporates both her experiences of being labeled and othered in school as well as the first-person experiences of people of various ages, ethnicities, races, and genders, who write about how they navigated and were affected by systemic racism in their K-12, college, and postgraduate educations. The contributors include well-known authors of young people’s literature including Joanna Ho, Minh Lê, and Randy Ribay; writers and educators such as Lorena and Roberto Germán, Torrey Maldonado, and Gayatri Sethi; and two entries by teens from Portland, Oregon. Alongside stories of segregation, mistreatment by white educators, hypervisibility, surveillance, stereotyping, pigeonholing, and exclusion, this collection asks readers to “envision what freedom in schools might be.” These bold tales of truth telling are interspersed with historical facts, definitions, and anti-racist pedagogy that emphasize and contextualize the reality that, while experiences of racism in educational systems evolve with each generation, one constant is that schools are microcosms of larger systems of inequality and institutional oppression in the world beyond classroom walls.
Unapologetic and unflinching: a critical read. (resources, recommended reading, references, about the contributors) (Nonfiction. 12-18)
