"Literacy, Identity, Imagination, Flight" by Keith Gilyard

Let me start off by saying wow! I never thought I would come across a reading where an English professor would reference W.E.B. Du Bois, Paul Laurence Dunbar, James Brown and Jay-Z in the same text. It is apparent that Mr. Gilyard is a highly educated man of color who is well respected in the world of academia but from the method in which he fluctuates his vernacular from formal/standard English to a more colloquial tone, makes it clearly indicative that he is trying to permeate his message into the minds of the young aspiring educators such as myself. The moral of the story is that it is a blessing to society for young people to go to college and obtain a bachelors degree, but it could be a curse to ones own soul if he/she earns that degree and loses 360 degrees of who she/he was before attending the first class. In a nut shell he's telling his audience yeah I got my education, you know what I'm saying? But I ain't catch amnesia. Son!-lol-

*FRUITS*
Dr. Martin Luther King chose to "subordinate certain other imaginative pursuits, such as leisurely study and contemplation of music and literature, to the taxing demands of the civil rights movement. And I thought of how often that kind of tradeoff has been made, how people have set aside particular and perhaps preferred flights of fancy because they have become absorbed in pressing matters that often have weighed them down and have not seemed very fanciful at all." (260-261)

"For example what I comprehend about structuralism and post structuralism is due to James Brown. On his recording There Was a Time, Brown opens by singing/stating that There was a dance, hah/ there was a time, hah/when I used to dance, hah. Let's examine this. The dance is the structure, the pattern of rythmic movements. For Brown to repeat the movements establishes a certain meaning inside a particular system of signification."(265)

"......students need to comprehend as completely as possible how discourse operates, which means understanding how the dominant or most powerful discourse serves to regulate and reproduce patterns of privilege."(266)

"Even as the view of language and learning I have been describing prompts us to develop courses that are broadly inviting with respect to linguistic and cultural differences, that encourage students to contribute through their writing to fuller accounts of the world....."(267)

*WEEDS* None.

*BASKET*
Frankly, this article had more fruits than a supermarket produce section. It appeals to me so much because I was the ghetto youth who was once recluse because I was afraid that people would find out that my family was struggling financially.  If I teach in the inner-city chances are my students will be faced with the same insatiable urges to be mute. Maybe from ignorance maybe from shame. I must teach my students that their stories are relevant regardless of what they are going through in life. I have to find creative ways of celebrating diversity as well as adversity. It's not where they are it is where they are going that counts.