About the Book

Here is a book excerpt:

M. K. Asante is a young writer, filmmaker, professor and hip-hop artist whose memoir Buck opens like this.

The fall in Killadelphia. Outside is the color of corn bread and blood. Change hangs in the air like the sneaks on the live wires behind my crib. Me and my big brother, Uzi, in the kitchen. He’s rolling a blunt on top of the Source, the one with Tyson on the cover rocking a kufi, ice-grilling through the gloss. Uzi can roll a blunt with his eyes closed.

Cracks, spits, busts. (3)

I’m with him instantly, but there are words I don’t know. I google “kufi,” which means a Muslim skullcap, and “ice-grilling,” which is a prison term for the look of one who is about to attack you, as well as the jewelry one wears in one’s teeth. The Source is a Hip-Hop magazine. I’m not sure about “gloss.”  Does it mean the shine of the page? In this context, maybe it means something else. In 73 words, I’ve entered a culture both familiar and strange, through the vibrant voice of a writer who is “code-meshing,” as linguists call it, mixing standard English and vernacular. “Me and my big brother Uzi, in the kitchen.” “Are” is unnecessary. “Zero copular,” as linguists say.

The destabilizing quality of the writing is part of its power for me—though of course Asante is not writing for me. He dedicates the book “To all the young bucks” like himself, like his brother Uzi, who is in prison. Uzi’s rage is pointed at his father, an African American scholar with “a dashiki for every day of the year” (10).  “If we made it from all that … from projects and plantations—what’s your problem?” his father asks. It is, Asante says, his constant refrain. But Uzi wants a part of the white culture—the Luke Skywalker doll, not the Lando Calrissian doll, the “corny black dude” played by Billy Dee Williams. He wants the special weapons, the special powers. (13) He also wants to be part of the energy of the street. He has been kicked out of several schools and at 17, his parents send him to live with a relative in Arizona. Shortly thereafter, he is arrested for sleeping with a 13-year-old white girl, who, he claims, said she was 16. He is sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Malo is living dangerously as well. His parents send him to a Friends school in Philadelphia, which he calls Foes. At Quaker meeting, children speak from the silence to say that they like the school. Malo says, “I don’t like this school because this school don’t like me” (34).

This book promotes teaching and learning that celebrate diversity, community, contemplation. It advocates the inclusion of traditionally “non-academic” voices and mindfulness-based, contemplative practices in the classroom. Though I write from the perspective of the classroom, which is my place of expertise, I also write as an inhabitant of our battered planet, trying not to despair and doing what I can to support our children in seeking peace and ways of using our extraordinary ingenuity to preserve and heal the earth.

Taking on this existential challenge means that we open our minds and hearts to all, with a sense of curiosity and reverence. As an English teacher, I start with literature. I discuss novels and memoirs whose power is tied to freedom of expression, arguing that teachers should give students the right to use and explore the various voices—standard, dialect, vernacular—that they bring to the classroom. I have taken my lead from teachers, artists, and scholars who support my deepest sense—as a woman, an Italian American, and a teacher of a diverse student body—that all students should be helped to use their knowledge, experience, intuition, and the full range of their linguistic repertoire to express their vision of the world. The freer students feel, the more likely they are to claim their rightful, transformative place in school.

. . . . . .

I also write about that great taboo in classroom writing, plagiarism. Students often plagiarize when they don’t feel free to write their own work or when the circumstances of their lives make such work impossible. And it is a commonplace that artists—writers, painters, sculptors, composers—steal from others, intentionally and unintentionally. That’s how knowledge and art proceed. We imitate and appropriate, and then we innovate. We may think we’re acknowledging our debts, but we aren’t. And yes, there should be boundaries on what students can do with the work of others, but we can make the whole process of doing our work less painful, less of a trap, by creating atmospheres of trust in which students feel free to respect their own voices, ideas, and images.

. . . . . .

The third part of the book traces the development of America’s interest in Eastern traditions and the growth of meditative practices in secular institutions. My growing interest in yoga and meditation supported my belief that students need to turn inward to take ownership of their own condition.  Using meditative practices in classrooms helps this happen. Students settle calmly into their work. The pace of the classroom slows down. The pressure of grades diminishes. Covering the material becomes secondary to understanding the material that is covered. We recognize that asking questions and admitting our bewilderment are integral parts of learning. Learning is not just “critical thinking,” debate style, but a recognition of the relationship between “the knower and the known.” It is a reverence for the persons sitting around us and those on the other side of the earth.

The psychic and physical costs of living in our ferocious, money-driven culture terrify me. This book offers concrete ways to support our students by inviting them to just be. To see what’s there, to embrace their voices and their silences. In an urgent time, sometimes it feels like all one can do is pray to come to our senses. To accept our fragility, our pain, our mortality. To proceed with loving care for all beings everywhere. May we be free from suffering, may we be compassionate, may we take joy in the good fortune of others, and may we remain balanced in the face of what comes.

Publisher: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group
Publication Year: 2018
ISBN: 978-1-138-57207-2 (hardcover)
ISBN: 978-0-203-70236-9 (ebook)