A note on this blog's organization

Since I first started this blog, I've read well over 600 books. I decided to organize them by sections, so to navigate to specific blog entries, review the sections below. To look for a specific book, you can check the list below, then use it to find the right page of the blog. Alternatively, you can try typing the book title or author's name in the search bar at the top left of this blog, but that seems to only pull from 'Conquering the Classics' and '101 and Beyond'.

Book Bingo #5 - Summer Breakthrough Book Bingo 2020

Book Bingo #5 - Another one of my own creation, inspired by staying connected to Breakthrough students and Teaching Fellows by sharing their reading experiences (24 works, no overlaps with '101 and Beyond')

From an email I sent about this to friends and family: As some of you may know, I'm a big fan of book bingos, and I've been doing them regularly for some time now, particularly in the summer. Given that I won't be able to visit our Breakthrough sites in person this summer, and that I want to stay connected to the conversations taking place at our sites and in this moment, I thought I'd make a Breakthrough version. This one is a little different than a typical bingo (which can be very fun also! See here for an example) in that I've pre-defined most of the spaces, to keep me/our staff connected to our affiliates. I have a long history with Breakthrough, and this was an engaging summer project during a very difficult time of life for so many people and so many reasons. Click here to learn more about this amazing organization and its affiliates. I also want to thank and acknowledge all of the affiliates who inspired these reads!

NOTE: Many of these reads deal with heavy and potentially painful and/or traumatic topics for people of color (police brutality, racism, internment, as examples) and/or readers who share experiences with the subject matter. That said, I think they are crucial reads for white readers, educators, young people, etc!

As with the other bingos, I'm listing the titles below left to right, top to bottom. Numbers have no meaning in terms of order, they're just for ease of reference.

Note: Blurbs below are either from the authors' websites or from booksellers. When possible, I've linked directly to the author's site to purchase a copy. Alternatively, feel free to use your local library, or buy local! 

Row 1:

    • There are no shortcuts to surviving your first day at a new school—you can’t fix it with duct tape like you would your Chuck Taylors. On Day One, twelve-year-old Malú (María Luisa, if you want to annoy her) inadvertently upsets Posada Middle School’s queen bee, violates the school’s dress code with her punk rock look, and disappoints her college-professor mom in the process. Her dad, who now lives a thousand miles away, says things will get better as long as she remembers the first rule of punk: be yourself. The real Malú loves rock music, skateboarding, zines, and Soyrizo (hold the cilantro, please). And when she assembles a group of like-minded misfits at school and starts a band, Malú finally begins to feel at home. She’ll do anything to preserve this, which includes standing up to an anti-punk school administration to fight for her right to express herself!
    • Eleven-year old Isabella lives in two worlds. She’s a double-backpack-carrying child of divorce, so she lives with her mom one week, and her dad the next. In addition, she’s bi-racial, and she sees herself as the caramel swirl milkshake that resulted from her mom’s vanilla and her dad’s chocolate ice cream. Izzy is an accomplished pianist, and as she practices for a crucial recital, the black keys and the white keys of her life combine to create an unexpected symphony of race, terror, and finally peace.
    • On the surface, Niru leads a charmed life. Raised by two attentive parents in Washington, D.C., he’s a top student and a track star at his prestigious private high school. Bound for Harvard in the fall, his prospects are bright. But Niru has a painful secret: he is queer—an abominable sin to his conservative Nigerian parents. No one knows except Meredith, his best friend, the daughter of prominent Washington insiders—and the one person who seems not to judge him. When his father accidentally discovers Niru is gay, the fallout is brutal and swift. Coping with troubles of her own, however, Meredith finds that she has little left emotionally to offer him. As the two friends struggle to reconcile their desires against the expectations and institutions that seek to define them, they find themselves speeding toward a future more violent and senseless than they can imagine. Neither will escape unscathed.
    • Edited by National Book Award finalist Ibi Zoboi, and featuring some of the most acclaimed bestselling Black authors writing for teens today—Black Enough is an essential collection of captivating stories about what it’s like to be young and Black in America. Black is…sisters navigating their relationship at summer camp in Portland, Oregon, as written by Renée Watson. Black is…three friends walking back from the community pool talking about nothing and everything, in a story by Jason Reynolds. Black is…Nic Stone’s high-class beauty dating a boy her momma would never approve of. Black is…two girls kissing in Justina Ireland’s story set in Maryland. Black is urban and rural, wealthy and poor, mixed race, immigrants, and more—because there are countless ways to be Black enough.
    • You don't have to be racist to be biased. Unconscious bias can be at work without our realizing it, and even when we genuinely wish to treat all people equally, ingrained stereotypes can infect our visual perception, attention, memory, and behavior. This has an impact on education, employment, housing, and criminal justice. In Biased, with a perspective that is at once scientific, investigative, and informed by personal experience, Jennifer Eberhardt offers us insights into the dilemma and a path forward.

Row 2:

    • In the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement and nationwide protests against police brutality, it’s never been more important for educators and parents to ensure they’re cultivating antiracist learning environments. Pathbreaking contributors—among them Beverly Daniel Tatum, Sonia Nieto, and Pedro Noguera—describe concrete ways to analyze classroom interactions that may or may not be “racial,” deal with racial inequality and “diversity,” and teach to high standards across racial lines. Topics range from using racial incidents as teachable moments and responding to the “n-word” to valuing students’ home worlds, dealing daily with achievement gaps, and helping parents fight ethnic and racial misconceptions about their children. Questions following each essay prompt readers to examine and discuss everyday issues of race and opportunity in their own classrooms and schools. Everyday Antiracism is an essential tool for all of the educators and parents who are determined to create not only more just classrooms, but also a more just world.
    • At the age of fourteen, Francisco Jiménez, together with his older brother Roberto and his mother, are caught by la migra. Forced to leave their home in California, the entire family travels all night for twenty hours by bus, arriving at the U.S. and Mexican border in Nogales, Arizona. In the months and years that follow during the late 1950s-early 1960s, Francisco, his mother and father, and his seven brothers and sister not only struggle to keep their family together, but also face crushing poverty, long hours of labor, and blatant prejudice. How they sustain their hope, their good-heartedness, and tenacity is revealed in this moving, Pura Belpré Honor–winning sequel to The Circuit. Without bitterness or sentimentality, Francisco Jiménez finishes telling the story of his youth.
    • In December 2000, the Baltimore Sun ran a small piece about Wes Moore, a local student who had just received a Rhodes Scholarship. The same paper also ran a series of articles about four young men who had allegedly killed a police officer in a spectacularly botched armed robbery. The police were still hunting for two of the suspects who had gone on the lam, a pair of brothers. One was named Wes Moore. Wes just couldn’t shake off the unsettling coincidence, or the inkling that the two shared much more than space in the same newspaper. After following the story of the robbery, the manhunt, and the trial to its conclusion, he wrote a letter to the other Wes, now a convicted murderer serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole. His letter tentatively asked the questions that had been haunting him: Who are you? How did this happen? That letter led to a correspondence and relationship that have lasted for several years. Over dozens of letters and prison visits, Wes discovered that the other Wes had had a life not unlike his own: Both had had difficult childhoods, both were fatherless; they’d hung out on similar corners with similar crews, and both had run into trouble with the police. At each stage of their young lives they had come across similar moments of decision, yet their choices would lead them to astonishingly different destinies. Told in alternating dramatic narratives that take readers from heart-wrenching losses to moments of surprising redemption, The Other Wes Moore tells the story of a generation of boys trying to find their way in a hostile world.
    • During World War II the incarceration camp called Manzanar was hastily created in the high mountain desert country of California, east of the Sierras. Its purpose? To house thousands of Japanese Americans. In Farewell to Manzanar, Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston recalls life at Manzanar through the eyes of the child she was and the experiences of her family. She relays the mundane and remarkable details of daily life during an extraordinary period of American history: The wartime imprisonment of civilians, most native-born Americans, in their own country, without trial, and by their fellow Americans. She tells of her fear, confusion, and bewilderment as well as the dignity and resourcefulness of people in oppressive and demeaning circumstances. Jeanne delivers a powerful first-person account that reveals her search for the meaning of Manzanar.
    • A young girl in Harlem discovers slam poetry as a way to understand her mother’s religion and her own relationship to the world. Debut novel of renowned slam poet Elizabeth Acevedo. Xiomara Batista feels unheard and unable to hide in her Harlem neighborhood. Ever since her body grew into curves, she has learned to let her fists and her fierceness do the talking. But Xiomara has plenty she wants to say, and she pours all her frustration and passion onto the pages of a leather notebook, reciting the words to herself like prayers—especially after she catches feelings for a boy in her bio class named Aman, who her family can never know about. With Mami’s determination to force her daughter to obey the laws of the church, Xiomara understands that her thoughts are best kept to herself. So when she is invited to join her school’s slam poetry club, she doesn’t know how she could ever attend without her mami finding out, much less speak her words out loud. But still, she can’t stop thinking about performing her poems. Because in the face of a world that may not want to hear her, Xiomara refuses to be silent.

Row 3:

    • In a profound work that pivots from the biggest questions about American history and ideals to the most intimate concerns of a father for his son, Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a powerful new framework for understanding our nation’s history and current crisis. Americans have built an empire on the idea of “race,” a falsehood that damages us all but falls most heavily on the bodies of black women and men—bodies exploited through slavery and segregation, and, today, threatened, locked up, and murdered out of all proportion. What is it like to inhabit a black body and find a way to live within it? And how can we all honestly reckon with this fraught history and free ourselves from its burden?
    • Justyce McAllister is top of his class, captain of the debate team, and set for the Ivy League next year—but none of that matters to the police officer who just put him in handcuffs. He is eventually released without charges (or an apology), but the incident has Justyce spooked. Despite leaving his rough neighborhood, he can’t seem to escape the scorn of his former peers or the attitude of his prep school classmates. The only exception: Sarah Jane, Justyce’s gorgeous—and white—debate partner he wishes he didn’t have a thing for. Struggling to cope with it all, Justyce starts a journal to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. But do Dr. King’s teachings hold up in the modern world? Justyce isn’t so sure. Then comes the day Justyce goes driving with his best friend, Manny, windows rolled down, music turned up. Way up. Much to the fury of the white off-duty cop beside them. Words fly. Shots are fired. And Justyce and Manny get caught in the crosshairs. In that media fallout, it’s Justyce who is under attack. The truth of what happened that night—some would kill to know. Justyce is dying to forget.
    • I don't want to remove this from the list, as I think it includes valuable insight. That said, this is also required reading.
    • Bestselling author Sherman Alexie tells the story of Junior, a budding cartoonist growing up on the Spokane Indian Reservation. Determined to take his future into his own hands, Junior leaves his troubled school on the rez to attend an all-white farm town high school where the only other Indian is the school mascot. Heartbreaking, funny, and beautifully written, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, which is based on the author's own experiences coupled with poignant drawings by Ellen Forney that reflect the character's art, chronicles the contemporary adolescence of one Native American boy as he attempts to break away from the life he was destined to live.
    • Sixteen-year-old Starr Carter moves between two worlds: the poor neighborhood where she lives and the fancy suburban prep school she attends. The uneasy balance between these worlds is shattered when Starr witnesses the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend Khalil at the hands of a police officer. Khalil was unarmed. Soon afterward, his death is a national headline. Some are calling him a thug, maybe even a drug dealer and a gangbanger. Protesters are taking to the streets in Khalil’s name. Some cops and the local drug lord try to intimidate Starr and her family. What everyone wants to know is: what really went down that night? And the only person alive who can answer that is Starr. But what Starr does—or does not—say could upend her community. It could also endanger her life.

Row 4:

    • Brown Girl Dreaming tells the story of Jacqueline Woodson's childhood, in verse. Raised in South Carolina and New York, Woodson always felt halfway home in each place. In these poems, Woodson shares what it was like to grow up as an African American in the 1960s and 1970s, living with the remnants of Jim Crow and her growing awareness of the Civil Rights movement. It also reflects the joy of finding her voice through writing stories, despite the fact that she struggled with reading as a child. Her love of stories inspired and stayed with her, creating the first sparks of the writer she was to become.
    • In this groundbreaking, radical analysis of contemporary classrooms, MacArthur award-winning author Lisa Delpit develops the theory that teachers must be effective "cultural transmitters" in the classroom, where prejudice, stereotypes, and assumptions often breed ineffective education. Delpit suggests that many academic problems attributed to children of color are actually the result of miscommunication, as primarily white teachers educate "other people's children" and perpetuate the imbalanced power dynamics that plague our system.
    • Told in a series of vignettes stunning for their eloquence, The House on Mango Street is Sandra Cisneros's greatly admired novel of a young girl growing up in the Latino section of Chicago. Acclaimed by critics, beloved by children, their parents and grandparents, taught everywhere from inner-city grade schools to universities across the country, and translated all over the world, it has entered the canon of coming-of-age classics. Sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes deeply joyous, The House on Mango Street tells the story of Esperanza Cordero, whose neighborhood is one of harsh realities and harsh beauty. Esperanza doesn't want to belong -- not to her rundown neighborhood, and not to the low expectations the world has for her. Esperanza's story is that of a young girl coming into her power, and inventing for herself what she will become.
    • For twenty-five years, Debby Irving sensed inexplicable racial tensions in her personal and professional relationships. As a colleague and neighbor, she worried about offending people she dearly wanted to befriend. As an arts administrator, she didn't understand why her diversity efforts lacked traction. As a teacher, she found her best efforts to reach out to students and families of color left her wondering what she was missing. Then, in 2009, one "aha!" moment launched an adventure of discovery and insight that drastically shifted her worldview and upended her life plan. In Waking Up White, Irving tells her often cringe-worthy story with such openness that readers will turn every page rooting for her-and ultimately for all of us.
    • Lorraine Hansberry's award-winning drama about the hopes and aspirations of a struggling, working-class family living on the South Side of Chicago connected profoundly with the psyche of Black America—and changed American theater forever. The play's title comes from a line in Langston Hughes's poem "Harlem," which warns that a dream deferred might "dry up/like a raisin in the sun."

Row 5:

    • “When it comes to justice, there is no easy way to get it. You can't sugarcoat it. You have to take a stand and say, ‘This is not right.’” —Claudette Colvin - On March 2, 1955, an impassioned teenager, fed up with the daily injustices of Jim Crow segregation, refused to give her seat to a white woman on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Instead of being celebrated as Rosa Parks would be just nine months later, fifteen-year-old Claudette Colvin found herself shunned by her classmates and dismissed by community leaders. Undaunted, a year later she dared to challenge segregation again as a key plaintiff in Browder v. Gayle, the landmark case that struck down the segregation laws of Montgomery and swept away the legal underpinnings of the Jim Crow South. Based on extensive interviews with Claudette Colvin and many others, Phillip Hoose presents the first major biography of a remarkable civil rights hero, skillfully weaving her riveting story into the fabric of the historic Montgomery bus boycott and court case that would change the course of American history.
  • (21) Ghost - Jason Reynolds
    • Ghost. Lu. Patina. Sunny. Four kids from wildly different backgrounds with personalities that are explosive when they clash. But they are also four kids chosen for an elite middle school track team—a team that could qualify them for the Junior Olympics if they can get their acts together. They all have a lot to lose, but they also have a lot to prove, not only to each other, but to themselves. Running. That’s all Ghost (real name Castle Cranshaw) has ever known. But Ghost has been running for the wrong reasons—it all started with running away from his father, who, when Ghost was a very little boy, chased him and his mother through their apartment, then down the street, with a loaded gun, aiming to kill. Since then, Ghost has been the one causing problems—and running away from them—until he meets Coach, an ex-Olympic Medalist who sees something in Ghost: crazy natural talent. If Ghost can stay on track, literally and figuratively, he could be the best sprinter in the city. Can Ghost harness his raw talent for speed, or will his past finally catch up to him?
    • Walk into any racially mixed high school and you will see Black, White, and Latino youth clustered in their own groups. Is this self-segregation a problem to address or a coping strategy? Beverly Daniel Tatum, a renowned authority on the psychology of racism, argues that straight talk about our racial identities is essential if we are serious about enabling communication across racial and ethnic divides. These topics have only become more urgent as the national conversation about race is increasingly acrimonious. This fully revised edition is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the dynamics of race in America.
    • Sierra Santiago planned an easy summer of making art and hanging with her friends. But then a corpse crashes the first party of the season. Her stroke-ridden grandfather starts apologizing over and over. And when the murals in her neighborhood begin to weep real tears . . . Well, something more sinister than the usual Brooklyn ruckus is going on.With the help of a fellow artist named Robbie, Sierra discovers shadowshaping, a thrilling magic that infuses ancestral spirits into paintings, music, and stories. But someone is killing the shadowshapers one by one -- and the killer believes Sierra is hiding their greatest secret. Now she must unravel her family's past, take down the killer in the present, and save the future of shadowshaping for herself and generations to come.Full of a joyful, defiant spirit and writing as luscious as a Brooklyn summer night, Shadowshaper introduces a fantasy heroine and magic unlike any you've ever seen before, and marks the YA debut of a brilliant new storyteller.
    • When sixteen-year-old Tariq Johnson dies from two gunshot wounds, his community is thrown into an uproar. Tariq was black. The shooter, Jack Franklin, is white. In the aftermath of Tariq’s death, everyone has something to say, but no two accounts of the events line up. By the day, new twists and turns further obscure the truth. Tariq’s friends family and community struggle to make sense of the tragedy, and of the hole left behind when a life is cut short. In their own words, they grapple for a way to say with certainty: This is how it went down.

My Reflections on this Book Bingo

As with the other book bingos, I won't blog separately on each of these books, as it has been a long time since I read many of these, and I wouldn't want to give them short shrift. What I will do instead is share passages I liked and/or general reflections from this bingo board.

Again, I don't have all of my notes from this era, so please don't take a lack of comments or notes here as a reflection of me not enjoying the read, or learning wonderful things! It probably just means I couldn't find my notes from the read, or borrowed them from the library, and so don't have my underlinings to look back on. ;)

I loved reading along with Breakthrough students, Teaching Fellows, staff members, Instructional Coaches, and families. This was a joyful reading set, though the subject matter was often heavy for me and for our students.

  • 1 - The First Rule of Punk
    • You may be far from home, kid, but you can take the music anywhere. 
    • It's a known fact that behind a book is always a good place for hiding and people-watching.
  • 2 - Blended
    • I don't have notes from this read, but I remember enjoying the experience of reading about a biracial teen as I felt it brought me closer to my nibling!
  • 3 - Speak No Evil
    • I'm late, the kind of late that suggests I have no regard for the emotional health of my Nigerian parents who probably think I've been kidnapped by the enemies of progress.
    • I can't help you disappear, I whisper into his ear, but I can help you forget.
    • Sometimes it is better to go to the world than to bring the world to you.
    • I am always someone's accessory, someone's afterthought, the supporting actress in another person's drama, and that thought fills me with fire.
  • 4 - Black Enough
    • I remember really enjoying these, and some authors popped back up in the bingo, like Jason Reynolds!
  • 5 - Biased & 6 - Everyday Anti-Racism
    • I remember really devouring these two, and them being great resources as an educator and as a human being. I know I had copies of both, but can't seem to locate them, despite my best efforts. I do have this note from Everyday Anti-Racism:
      • Dime con quién andas y te diré quién eres. (proverb, unknown origin) - it means, Tell me who you walk with and I'll tell you who you are, in other words, the company you keep is a reflection of you.
  • 7 - Breaking Through
    • I can only imagine the stories that are being written about the atrocities facing immigrants and their families in the U.S. from the last few years. This book was an excellent read.
  • 8 - The Other Wes Moore
    • Again, I 100% know that I have a copy of this book, but I cannot locate it for the life of me. I will say that I have met Wes Moore, he is a lovely human being, and this is a very compelling read. He spoke at an education convention I went to, and I found his story and his work quite moving. He is currently the governor of Maryland. 
  • 9 - Farewell to Manzanar - this was an intense and excellent read, and I feel like should be required reading for all of us to remember that we have a history of internment camps in America (past and present).
    • He had become a man without a country.
    • Shikata ga nai. (It cannot be helped.) Shikata ga nai. (It must be done.)
    • We were a band of Charlie Chaplins marooned in the California desert. 
    • As long as military men control the country you are always going to have a war. 
    • Much more than a remembered place, it had become a state of mind. 
    • The fac that America had accused us, or excluded us, or imprisoned us, or whatever it might be called, did not change the kind of world we wanted. 
    • That continuous, unnamed ache I had been living with was precise and definable now. Call it the foretaste of being hated. 
    • Without the answer he could continue dabbling with the dream. 
    • One of the amazing things about America is the way it can both undermine you and keep you believing in your own possibilities, pumping you up with hope.
  • 10 - The Poet X - NOTE - some of the lines/phrases aren't listed exactly as in the book due to this blog's limitations. 
    • If Medusa was Dominican and had a daughter, I think I'd be her. I look and feel like a myth. 
    • Just because your father's present doesn't mean he isn't absent.
    • Your silence furnishes a dark house. But even at the risk of burning, the moth always seeks the light.
    • Late into the night I write and the pages of my notebook swell from all the words I've pressed onto them. It almost feels like the more I bruise the page the quicker something inside me heals.
    • You ever look at someone that you've known your whole life and it's almost like their face reconfigures itself right in front of your eyes.
    • I sit wondering how writing can bring such strange strangers into the same room.
    • My little words feel important, for just a moment. This is a feeling I could get addicted to. 
    • The more I write the braver I become.
  • 11 - Between the World and Me
    • This was my second time reading this book, and it's one of my favorite books. Again, I am quite frustrated that I can't seem to locate my copy. Suffice it to say, it is underlined all the way through!
  • 12 - 14 (Dear Martin, Absolutely True Diary of Part-Time Indian, The Hate U Give)
    • These were all excellent reads, but believe I borrowed them all from the library, and don't have my notes on them. See above note re: Alexie.
  • 15 - Brown Girl Dreaming - as with 'The Poet X', the lines are not necessarily listed as they are in the work, due to the limitations of this blog. 
    • I let the stories live inside my head, again and again until the readl world fades back into cricket lullabies and my own dreams.
    • Gave their kids names that no master could ever take away.
    • In the stores downtown we're always followed around just because we're brown.
    • This is the way brown people have to fight, my grandfather says. You can't just put your fist up. You have to insist on something gently. Walk toward a thing slowly. But be ready to die, my grandfather says, for what is right. Be ready to die, my grandfather says, for everything you believe in.
    • I do not know if these hands will become Malcolm's - raised and fisted - or Martin's - open and asking - or James's - curled around a pen. I do not know if these hands will be Rosa's or Ruby's gently gloved and firecely folded calmly in a lap, on a desk, around a book, ready to change the world...
  • 16 - Other People's Children
    • We have to feel a little sorry for them because they have only one way to talk. We're going to learn two ways to say things. Isn't that better? 
    • People are experts on their own lives.
    • We must learn to be vulnerable enough to allow our world to turn upside down in order to allow the realities of others to edge themselves into our consciousness. God, what a wonderful line.
    • From a native teacher: If there's someone who doesn't understand what I'm teaching, I try to understand who they are.
  • 17 - House on Mango Street
    • Again, this is a classic, but I think I got this one from the library, so I have no notes!
  • 18 - Waking Up White
    • I found this an interesting read, but don't have my notes from this one either.
  • 19 - A Raisin in the Sun
    • Another classic, which I've read multiple times, but don't have my notes.
  • 20 - Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice
    • Once again, I enjoyed this one, and I know I bought a copy, but I don't have it any more. I remember being floored that there was a pre-Rosa Parks moment, and that Claudette wasn't the 'right face' for the movement as a pregnant teen. Then again, I know nothing of what it was like trying to engineer a nationwide movement! But I did feel for Claudette.
  • 21 - Ghost
    • No notes, though again, I'm positive I had a copy. Did someone steal these books from me? 
  • 22 - Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?
    • Only 22 percent of all American Indians live on reservations and trust lands. 
    • More Native people live in poverty than any other racial group.
    • The task of resisting our own oppression does not relieve us of the responsibility of acknowledging our complicity in the oppression of others.
    • On testing whether or not to engage with a white person as a Black person - At times, the most poignant part of the test is that Black people have enough trust left to give it. Testing implies that we might pass the test. It is safer and easier for a Black person to turn his back on us.
    • The task of interrupting racism is obviously not the task of whites alone. But the fact of white privilege means that whites have greater access to the societal institutions in need of transformation. To whom much is given, much is required.
    • Because racism is so ingrained in the fabric of American institutions, it is easily self-perpetuating. All that is required to maintain it is to go about business as usual. I've heard this described as the conveyor belt at an airport, by Dr. Tatum and others. If the walkway is systemic racism, active racism is walking forward, passive racism is standing still, and antiracism is walking backward on the moving walkway.
    • To say that it is not our fault does not relieve us of responsibility.
    • Cultural racism is like smog in the air. We may not have polluted the air, but we need to take responsibility, along with others, for cleaning it up.
    • How is the circle being drawn? Who is inside it? Who is outside it? What can I do to make the circle bigger? 
    • None of us would introduce ourselves as 'smog breathers' (and most of us down't want to be described as prejudiced), but if we live in a smoggy place, how can we avoid breathing the air? 
    • Assumptions come not only from what we have seen and been told, but also what we have not been told. This has been a BIG takeaway for me on my own antiracism and growth journey. What wasn't I told? What history didn't I learn? 
    • Quoting Audre Lorde - When I dare to be powerful, to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less important whether or not I am afraid.
    • Across the US, 1.5 million Black men are 'missing' - snatched from society by imprisonment or premature death. 
  • 23 - Shadowshaper
    • Who gets to study and who gets studied, and why? 
    • Papa Acevedo always used to say people don't see what they're not looking for. 
    • She ran her hands through her fro. She loved it the way it was, free and undaunted. She imagined it as a force field.
    • Today she looked menacingly into the mirror and said "I'm Sierra María Santiago. I am what I am. Enough. More than Enough. She almost believed it."
  • 24 - How it Went Down
    • It's a long time I been loving folk. Long time, I been losing 'em. But I ain't never known a sorrow like this one.

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