About this item
A groundbreaking and visionary call to action on educating and supporting girls of color, from the highly acclaimed author of Pushout "Monique Morris is a personal shero of mine and a respected expert in this space." - Ayanna Pressley, U.S. congresswoman and the first woman of color elected to Boston's city council Wise Black women have known for centuries that the blues have been a platform for truth-telling, an underground musical railroad to survival, and an essential form of resistance, healing, and learning. In her highly anticipated follow-up to the widely acclaimed Pushout on the criminalization of black girls in schools, Monique W. Morris invokes the spirit of the blues to articulate a radically healing and empowering pedagogy for Black and Brown girls. A passionate manifesto that builds naturally on her previous book, Sing a Rhythm, Dance a Blues reimagines what education might look like if schools placed the flourishing of Black and Brown girls at their center. Grounding each chapter in interviews, case studies, and testimonies of educators who work successfully with girls of color, Morris blends research with real life to offer a radiant manifesto on moving away from punishment, trauma, and discrimination toward safety, justice, and genuine community in our schools. In the tradition of For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood and Other People's Children, Morris's new book is a clarion call - for educators, parents, students, and anyone who has a stake in a better tomorrow - to transform schools into places where learning and collective healing can flourish.
About the Author
Monique W. Morris, Ed.D. is an award-winning author and social justice scholar with three decades of experience in the areas of education, civil rights, juvenile and criminal justice. In April 2020, Dr. Morris became the inaugural Executive Director of Grantmakers for Girls of Color, a philanthropic collaborative that supports a world in which all girls and young women of color are healthy, safe, thriving, and fully empowered to dream and shape their desired reality on their terms, while dismantling structural barriers created by racism, sexism and ageism and other forms of oppression that prevent their full participation in our country's future. Dr. Morris is an Executive Producer and co-writer of the documentary film, PUSHOUT: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools, which is based upon two of her books, Sing A Rhythm, Dance A Blues: Education for the Liberation of Black and Brown Girls (The New Press, 2019) and PUSHOUT: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools (The New Press, 2016) . She is also the author of Black Stats: African Americans by the Numbers in the Twenty-First Century (The New Press, 2014) , Too Beautiful for Words (MWM Books, 2012) , and she worked with Kemba Smith on her book, Poster Child: The Kemba Smith Story (IBJ Book Publishing, 2011) . Dr. Morris has written dozens of articles, book chapters, and other publications on social justice issues and lectured widely on research, policies, and practices associated with improving juvenile/criminal justice, educational, and socioeconomic conditions for girls and women of color. Her 2018 TED talk on how to stop the criminalization of Black girls in schools has received more than 1.7 million views and been translated into 18 languages. Dr. Morris is the Founder of the National Black Women's Justice Institute (NBWJI) , an organization that works to interrupt school-to-confinement pathways for girls, reduce the barriers to employment for formerly incarcerated women, and increase the capacity of organizations working to reduce sexual assault and domestic violence in African American communities. She served as an adjunct associate professor for Saint Mary's College of California between 2013-2018 and has taught at the University of San Francisco and California State University, Sacramento. Dr. Morris is a 2012 Soros Justice Fellow, the former Vice President for Economic Programs, Advocacy and Research at the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the former Director of Research for the Thelton E. Henderson Center for Social Justice at the UC Berkeley Law School. She has also worked in partnership with and served as a consultant for federal, state and county agencies, national academic and research institutions, and communities throughout the nation to develop research, comprehensive approaches and training curricula to eliminate racial/ethnic and gender disparities in justice and educational systems. Her work in this area has infor
