Jabari Mahiri Books

Contributors to this book have illuminated the practices of literacy and learning in the lives of urban youth. Their descriptions and assessments of these practices are anchored in perspectives of «New Literacy Studies». The ten studies explore a number of urban scenes in order to engage, understand, and present multiple youth identities, attitudes, activities, representations, and stories connected to a range of situated, adaptive, and voluntary uses of literacy. The authors use a variety of conceptual and methodological approaches to explicate the various skills, the distinct methods of production or composition, the subjective and collective meanings, the mutable and variegated texts, and the dynamic contexts that urban youth utilize for expression, affirmation, and pleasure. There is a response to each chapter by a major scholar in its area of focus. Together, these studies and responses contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of the pedagogies, politics, and possibilities of literacy and learning in and out of school.

Many athletes have written about their sports journeys; many professors have applied academic theories to sports; but never before have the two genres merged into a riveting book. Using the life stories of six student athletes - each representing a different race and/or gender and/or class - and deftly applying various academic theories, but always in clear English, Jabari Mahiri and Derek Van Rheenen extrapolate worlds of meaning from their evidence. In so doing, they ask the crucial questions about race, gender, and class in sports, particularly at the intersection of sports and education, and then provide some remarkable answers. This book is essential reading for everyone interested in American sports and education, and it should become a classic in the field. (Murray Sperber, Professor Emeritus of English and American Studies, Indiana University, Bloomington; Author of 'Beer & Circus: How Big- time College Sports Is Crippling Undergraduate Education')