Vernacular Insurrections

Carmen Kynard

Description

Winner of the 2015 James M. Britton Award presented by Conference on English Education a constituent organization within the National Council of Teachers of English

Carmen Kynard locates literacy in the twenty-first century at the onset of new thematic and disciplinary imperatives brought into effect by Black Freedom Movements. Kynard argues that we must begin to see how a series of vernacular insurrections—protests and new ideologies developed in relation to the work of Black Freedom Movements—have shaped our imaginations, practices, and research of how literacy works in our lives and schools.

Utilizing many styles and registers, the book borrows from educational history, critical race theory, first-year writing studies, Africana studies, African American cultural theory, cultural materialism, narrative inquiry, and basic writing scholarship. Connections between social justice, language rights, and new literacies are uncovered from the vantage point of a multiracial, multiethnic Civil Rights Movement.
Acknowledgments

Introduction: Runnin with the Rabbits, but Huntin with the Dogs: On the Makings of an Intellectual Autobiography

Teaching Interlude I: Method Men and Women

1. “Before I’ll Be a Slave, I’ll Be Buried in My Grave”: Black Student Protest as Discursive Challenge and Social Turn in Nineteenth– and Twentieth–Century Literacies

Teaching Interlude II: Through Their Window

2. “I Want To Be African”: Tracing Black Radical Traditions with “Students’ Rights to Their Own Language”

Teaching Interlude III: Undoing the Singularity of “Ethical English” and Language–as–Racial–Inferiority

3. “Ain’t We Got a Right to the Tree of Life?”: The Black Arts Movement and Black Studies as the Untold Story of and in Composition Studies

Teaching Interlude IV: “Not Like the First Time, Talkin Bout the Second Time”

4. “The Revolution Will Not Be [Error Analyzed]”: The Black Protest Tradition of Teaching and the Integrationist Moment

Teaching Interlude V: “Your Mother is Weak”

5. What a Difference an Error Makes: Ongoing Challenges for “White Innocence,” Historiography, and Disciplinary Knowledge Making

Outerlude: Leaving the Emerald City

Notes
Index

Sujets

• Ethnic studies
• Tertiary education

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 02 avril 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438446370
• Langue: English

Extrait

Vernacular Insurrections
Race, Black Protest, and the New Century in Composition-Literacies Studies
CARMEN KYNARD

Cover image: Photo of Civil Rights protest in Farmville, July 1963. Image courtesy of “Richmond Times-Dispatch.”
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2013 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
www.sunypress.edu
Production by Eileen Nizer
Marketing by Fran Keneston
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kynard, Carmen, 1971—author.
Vernacular insurrections : race, black protest, and the new century in composition-literacies studies / Carmen Kynard.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4384-4635-6 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. African Americans—Education. 2. African Americans—Social conditions. 3. Multicultural education—United States. 4. English language—Rhetoric—Study and teaching—United States. 5. English language—Composition and exercises—Study and teaching—United States. I. Title.
LC2717.K94 2013
371.82996073—dc23
2012018794
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

In Memoriam
Pigeon Underwood Kynard
Sunrise February 12, 1917
Sunset January 26, 2010
Acknowledgments
It's been a long time coming on this book and so I have many thanks to give. My editor at SUNY, Beth Bouloukos, has been the kind of writing teacher we should all have: patient, supportive, and critical. I am indebted to a special cast and crew at New York University's Steinhardt School of Education and to the Founders Fellowship there under the leadership of Dean Mary Brabeck. John Mayher believed in my abilities more than I did and was the first person to encourage me to decide and define my writer's identity. Gordon Pradl always pushed me to think harder and to know my stuff and gave me mounds of books to get the job done. And of course, much love to SuperDiva Suzanne Carothers who has valued my life and well-being more than anyone. I thank all of my former teachers who let me explore and think critically: Sarah Beck, Renee Blake, Robby Cohen, Manthia Diawara, Maryann Dickar, Berenice Fischer, Brenda Greene, Perry Greene, Floyd Hammack, Robin Kelley, Ngugi wa’ Thiong'o, Oliver Patterson, Ira Shor, and Marcie Wolfe. Any errors here are all mine (don't hold my opinions against them). I owe much gratitude to John Rouse, who took the time out to guide me, invite me into his home, and share with me his thoughts on my rather youth-energized question: Why those folk act so crazy about that review you wrote in 1979? I also thank, with warmth and praises, Jacqueline Jones Royster, whom I was honored to have shared this project with. You have inspired my mind, heart, and soul and pushed me to see this work and myself as valuable. I thank the woman who birthed me intellectually, Sylvia Wynter. I will always be your student, always learning at your feet, always indebted to you for your example of who and what a scholar-teacher-thinker is and does.
This work would not have been possible without two special divas. Like Sister Sledge sang back in the day, “I got all my sisters with me!” In my case, I'm talkin’ bout Avon Cowell-Connell and Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz, the two flyest and most genuine girlfriends you could ever have (and Lil Olivia Diva too). Thank you to everyone who has lifted my head and heart through this process: Bob Eddy, brother and comrade who always checked in on me to make sure that I was alright and when I wasn't, assured me that I would make it; Demetrius Eudell, who was once my TA when I was only nineteen and first inspired me to see myself as an academic; Institute N.H.I. at Stanford University who always pushed to make scholarship theory, knowledge, and liberation ONE word; my homies, Rod Bowen, Kwanza Butler, and Karma Suttles, whom I moved to NYC with in order to become a teacher; Wayne Russell, Jamaican-Iron-Chef, who sustained me with soursop, sorrel, jerk chicken, sea moss, black cake, and porridge, all seasoned with his special care and support; Peter Elbow, for always having my back and being a shoulder to cry on; my old Bronx crew, Debbie Black, Eric Debarros, and Raphael Osorio, whose conversations sustained me more than anything else and got me from there to here; for the sisterhood and support of Jamie Lew, Sherri-Ann Butterfield, and Marcia Brown at Rutgers-Newark; to John Rodriguez for seeing and understanding my attempts to lyricize a classroom; to Michelle Hite, for always making me remember high standards attached to black love, beauty, and freedom; to my sistas on the set at St. John's University—Regina Duthely and Sammantha McCalla—so glad yall are here; the first spinner to make me my own groove, and at 4Cs at that, Todd Craig; to Jessica Barros, for never giving up on the ancestors' dream for her; to a set of graduate students who are putting in the good fight—Mary Jo Caruso, Kathie Cheng, Amanda Grefski, Erin Fiero, Jennifer Lebowitz, Steven Netcoh, Radha Radkar, Deborah Sanchez, Jamila Smith; to the Black Caucus of NCTE/CCCC for the past, present, and future that spills out onto the pages here. I thank my first college family at Medgar Evers College in the departments of Education and English for teaching this newjack how to swing! I send much gratitude to my colleagues in the department of English and the First Year Writing program at St. John's University, especially my chair, Stephen Sicari, and program coordinator, Dorothy Bukay, for support and encouragement.
And of course, I thank that whole Noah's Ark of Kynards and all that they taught me about life and love: Grandma Pigeon, Granddaddy William, my fourteen aunts and uncles, my forty-four first cousins and counting, and fifty-plus seconds, thirds, and so forth. We need our own real reality TV show! I especially thank my parents, Ruth and Joseph, who have always cheered me on, even when I was thirteen years old contemplating being a brain surgeon, fashion designer, Sheila E, or all three at the same time.
I will always remember that one day in graduate school when I was really down and overwhelmed with work and school and life and one of my students came into my office, looked at my face, and told me: “Remember, you are not just doing this for you, you are doing this for us.” So to all the students who have shared their minds and hearts with me—from East Palo Alto to South Central L.A.; from the Boogie Down Bronx, down into money-takin Manhattan and on through into Brooklyn; from Newark to Queens—this one is for all yall. May all of your classrooms someday match your infinite beauty, intellect, and literacies.
An earlier version of a story about Rakim in teaching interlude II first appeared as “ ‘Looking for the Perfect Beat’: The Power of Black Student Protest Rhetorics for Academic Literacy and Higher Education,” in Changing English: Studies in Culture and Education 12, no. 3 (December 2005): full article on pages 387–402. Reprinted by permission of Taylor & Francis Ltd, http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals . An earlier version of chapter 2 was published as “ ‘I Want To Be African’: In Search of a Black Radical radition/African-American-Vernacularized Paradigm for ‘Students' Rights to Their Own Language,’ Critical Literacy, and ‘Class Politics,’ ” in College English 69, no. 4 (March 2007): pages 356–86. Copyright 2007 by the National Council of Teachers of English. Reprinted with permission. An earlier version of a story about Sherrie in teaching interlude III first appeared in “ ‘Trying to Bend The Tree When It Is Already Grown’: Spanning the Spectrum of African Diaspora Englishes in the Writing Classroom,” in Teaching English Today: Advocating Change in the Secondary Curriculum , edited by Barrie R. C. Barell, Roberta Hammett, John S. Mayher, and Gordon M. Pradl (Teachers College Press, 2004), full chapter on pages 92–105. Reprinted with permission. Cover photo represents 1963 Civil Rights Protest by students in Farmville, originally printed in the Richmond-Times Dispatch .
Introduction
Runnin with the Rabbits, but Huntin with the Dogs
On the Makings of an Intellectual Autobiography
After five years of teaching high school, I needed space and time to think through what I had witnessed in the education of the African American and Latino/a youth whom I had taught. I wrote to my college undergraduate mentor, Sylvia Wynter, explaining that I was taking time off to “think my way out of this twilight zone that has become my daily reality.” The personal statements that my graduating high school seniors had written for college were to be a guiding intellectual force for my graduate study in English. These were students I had followed since 1994 when they were freshman at a new high school in the Bronx, New York. I had asked them once to close their eyes and imagine what they wanted from a college education. Why was education important to their lives? One young woman talked about her mother's heroin addiction and argued that college would show her how to offer guidance and support to othe