Status
Publication
Description
"Fifteen-year-old Diamond stopped going to school the day she was expelled for lashing out at peers who constantly harassed and teased her for something everyone on the staff had missed: she was being trafficked for sex. After months on the run, she was arrested and sent to a detention center for violating a court order to attend school. Black girls represent 16 percent of female students but almost half of all girls with a school-related arrest. The first trade book to tell these untold stories, Pushout exposes a world of confined potential and supports the growing movement to address the policies, practices, and cultural illiteracy that push countless students out of school and into unhealthy, unstable, and often unsafe futures. For four years Monique W. Morris, author of Black Stats, chronicled the experiences of black girls across the country whose intricate lives are misunderstood, highly judged-by teachers, administrators, and the justice system-and degraded by the very institutions charged with helping them flourish. Morris shows how, despite obstacles, stigmas, stereotypes, and despair, black girls still find ways to breathe remarkable dignity into their lives in classrooms, juvenile facilities, and beyond"--Provided by publisher.… (more)
User reviews
Chicago's schools, for example, have "closed campus" with no recess, and it's been that way for 25 years. NO RECESS! Think back to your time in school and just try imagining it with "limited time to take a break, release, and reset."
Other problems - sex trafficking, inadequate foster care, and a lack of understanding of "street culture" and limited advice on how to overcome obstacles such as poverty and parental drug addiction are discussed, as are alternatives to punishment such as juvenile facilities.
The author says, "But for the empathetic educators who sought to cultivate my intelligence as a clear path towards personal freedom, who knows where I would be. What I learned and now know with certainty is that the education of Black girls is a lifesaving act of social justice."