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HANDBOOK OF ADOLESCENT LITERACY RESEARCH edited by Linda Christenbury, Randy Bomer, and Peter Smagorinsky New York: Guilford Press, 2009. 452 pp. $65.00.
In Push: A Novel (1997) , die author Sapphire depicts the life of a young Black woman, Precious P. Jones, living in Harlem in the 1990s. At the beginning of the book, Precious describes the emotional, physical, and sexual abuse she endured from her parents in broken words. She also writes about her hopes, dreams, and desires - also in broken words. By the time she is sixteen, Precious has two children by her own father. That year, her teachers encourage her to attend an alternative high school where she finally learns to read and write. Precious writes in her journal one day: "I am Precious ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST// UVWXYZ// My baby is born// My baby is black//I am girl// I am black// I want house to live" (p. 76).
More than a century and a half earlier, a teenage slave in Maryland named Frederick Douglass was also learning how to read and write. This time, though, the quest for literacy occurred in secret, because it was illegal for slaves to learn how to read. As soon as Douglass learned to read, he could think of nothing more than the desire to become free. At the same time, he agonized over the conditions of enslavement affecting him and hundreds of thousands of other slaves living in America. Douglass (1845) wrote, "The more I read, the more I was led to abhor and detest my enslavers . . . The silver trump of freedom had roused my soul to eternal wakefulness" (p. 84) . Becoming literate transformed his life, setting him on the path to become one of the nation's preeminent abolitionists.
Last year, Tatiana Gomez,1 a student in my elevendi-grade English class, read Frederick Douglass's narrative for a history assignment. Tatiana used to see herself as a "good enough" reader, dutifully reading during independent reading in my class and sometimes reading outside of class. Yet, after reading about Douglass's life and his quest for literacy, Tatiana told me that her attitude toward reading had been transformed. Now, she says, she is a more serious, avid reader because she knows that reading can be a tool...