Journal Article

Reading Things Not Seen: A Reflection on Teaching Reading, Race, and Ghosts in Juvenile Detention

Majors, Yolanda, Ortlieb, Evan, Joubert, Ezekiel

2017

Overview

Ezekiel Joubert III discusses the (im)possibilities of using literature that includes the death of or violence on bodies of color and the presence of ghosts of color in curricula that supposedly promote social justice to examine how we read historical and social tragedies that haunt our historical and collective memory. Using the literary responses and reflections from juvenile detainees in a summer reading program, this studies shows how teens identified and named the racialized ghosts present in literature taught to juveniles. The article explains how reading the presence of racialized ghosts within the curriculum allowed students to co-construct knowledge, build a sociopolitical consciousness and engage in dialogue with one another and the texts in the era of extrajudicial killings of people of color in the era of #BlackLivesMatter and Trayvon Martin.

• Publisher: Wiley Subscription Services, Inc,Blackwell Publishing Ltd
• Subject: 3‐Early adolescence / 4‐Adolescence / Adolescents / African Americans / Collective memory / Critical thinking / Curricula / Fiction / Gender/race/class/sexual orientation / Identity / Juvenile justice / Literacy programs / Literature / Metacognition < Comprehension / Multicultural literature / Nonfiction / Reading instruction / Retelling < Comprehension / Social justice / Sociolinguistics / Teaching / Text features / text structure < Comprehension / UNLOCKING LITERACY LEARNING