Does My Child Need Me to Lead or to Follow?

DOES MY CHILD NEED ME TO LEAD OR TO FOLLOW? by Claudia Schwarzlmüller is an international best-seller which covers “A Radically Simple Way to Parent Children from Infancy Through Age 6.” Schwarzlmüller is a child psychologist with over twenty years of experience. Her tone is wonderful – calm, compassionate, nonjudgmental, and definitely striving to represent the child’s viewpoint. For example, in the Your Toddler section, she describes behavior which is SO familiar (e.g., a toddler “loves taking things out and putting them away”… and “needs to repeat behaviors many times in order to learn … repetition is the name of the game”). She discusses thinking and playing (when a child “learns about objects by putting them in his mouth, banging them against something else, studying, turning, rubbing, or throwing them”), as well as feelings and relationships, movement, and speech. To me (a relatively new grandmother), the insights Schwarzlmüller offers are spot-on, valuable and actionable (e.g., she lists a series of play schemas and what your child learns from practice like Positioning (a sense of length, height, distance), Transforming, Connecting, Enveloping, Transporting, Dividing/Scattering (geometry/math, quantity, shapes, volume), Sorting, Filling, and Orientation). She writes about allowing your child to lead (“give them the freedom to try things out and as much free time to play as possible”), but also notes, “Children need to find their bearings and to feel safe. You are the missing partner in this social dance if you don't assume your role in moments of leading. Your child is searching for balance between moments of leading and moments of play, just like the rest of us.” Additional parts of the book deal with Your Baby, From Toddler to Preschooler, From Preschooler to Kindergartener to First Grader, plus introductory material, a list of references, and further reading suggestions. Publishers Weekly called this text “a valuable resource for parents of young children [in which] research-based insight meets practical guidance.” I heartily concur and I am highly recommending DOES MY CHILD NEED ME TO LEAD OR TO FOLLOW?

THE MIXED + MULTIRACIAL GUIDE TO WELLBEING by Namalee Bolle is subtitled “Navigating Family, Identity + Healing.” Bolle divides the text into three parts: Unpack, Discover and Thrive. She describes her own history (British born of Sri-Lankan and Dutch-Jewish heritage) and that of other multi-racial people as she encourages readers to reflect on their unique situations. It felt at points as though this text was more about therapy-type exercises and less about actual research findings (of which there may not be many). However, I did gain insights from reading about children who are multiracial – as she says, they are racially different to both parents. That may seem obvious, but it is worth pausing and contemplating that idea along with how difficult it is for all of us to find our identities as adolescents and how these children must learn to recognize/accept that “I am this and this and that.” I plan to look into the children’s books that she recommended (e.g., The Truth about Dragons) and also to watch 1000% Me, an HBO/Max documentary. Overall, an interesting starting point for more discussion and research.

Was That Racist? by Evelyn R. Carter

WAS THAT RACIST? by Evelyn R. Carter describes in detail “How to Detect, Interrupt, and Unlearn Bias in Everyday Life.” Carter is a social psychologist, author of cutting-edge research, and a consultant on diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts.  Her text is relatively short, but powerful, with chapters that discuss topics like how racial bias can be subtle or the magnitude of White privilege. She objectively defines terms like systemic racism or bystander effect and offers relatable examples as when she talks about comments from her own healthcare provider. One of her strongest positions is that “to stop biased behavior, you must call out the person responsible for the behavior” and she devotes another chapter to various means (e.g., public declarations) for calling out bias. Yet another chapter explores ways in which children learn bias and how and when they discover race and racism, again with some memorable personal anecdotes. Resources listed in that chapter are valuable, too: EmbraceRace; social justice books for teens; We Need Diverse Books; and PBS Kids for parents. Near the end, Carter acknowledges the current difficult situation and references Dr. King’s famous speech: “We shall overcome ... because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” Her call to action is blunt and hopeful: “If we collectively take responsibility for calling out bias -- questioning how our families, workplaces, and communities can improve, and actively working toward that vision -- change will follow.” WAS THAT RACIST? is thoroughly researched and notes comprise approximately twenty percent of the text. 

Speak to Me of Home by Jeanine Cummins

SPEAK TO ME OF HOME by Jeanine Cummins (American Dirt) is worth a read, but beware that the story is told out of sequence and from multiple viewpoints. The focus is on the lives of a Puerto Rican-Irish family across four generations from the 1950s to present day. The patriarch, Papamio loses his job in disgrace and the family is forced to modify its lavish lifestyle, with daughter Rafaela (Rafa) leaving private school and becoming a secretary on a Naval base. There, she meets her future husband, a white Irish Catholic, choosing security over her romantic interest in the son of the family’s former housekeeper. After several years of marriage (and accompanying tension) Rafa and Peter Brennan move to the States with their two children, Benny and Ruth. Benny is older and struggles to acclimate, but Ruth establishes friendships and begins speaking only English, thinking of herself as white. As an adult, Ruth also has a choice between a Puerto Rican man and an Irish one. Eventually she raises three children, Vic, Daisy, and Carlos, largely on her own. Ruth “wanted them to feel the kind of belonging she had always learned for and could never achieve. But she hadn't told them that. She had never explained.” The family members struggle with questions of class, ethnicity, and where to call home with Daisy moving to Puerto Rico where she is seriously injured in a storm, prompting a family reunion and revelation of a long-suspected secret. Book groups may enjoy this title, especially the emphasis on mother-daughter relationships.

Yet here I Am by Jonathan Capehart

YET HERE I AM by Jonathan Capehart is subtitled “Lessons from a Black Man’s Search for Home” and provides ample insight into the background and influences on this award-winning journalist who appears regularly on PBS NewsHour with David Brooks (How to Know a Person). Capehart shares stories about his childhood including being raised by a single mother and her re-marriage when he was a sophomore in high school (hard on any kid), “a suburban middle-class Black kid who grew up playing with white kids now back in a majority Black city [Newark] with no clue about how to relate or fit in.” Writing about college at Carleton, Capehart says, “without a doubt, just about every wonderful thing that has happened in my life can be traced back to my decision to go to that small liberal arts college in Minnesota.” He continues with engaging stories about his work in the news media, including Washington Post and MSNBC, and offers unique perspective on being gay and Black, commenting, “Blackness is always at the mercy of someone else’s judgment. You can be too Black, not Black enough, or not Black at all, and I have run the range my entire life.” YET HERE I AM received a starred review from Kirkus and praise from, among others, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Katie Couric, Michele Norris, and Jon Meacham. 

Resist by Rita Omokha

RESIST by Rita Omokha is subtitled “How a Century of Young Black Activists Shaped America.” The author is an award-winning Nigerian American journalist and an adjunct professor at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. In RESIST she traces people and events from the 1920s (time of Scottsboro Nine) through the Civil Rights Era (Brown v. Board and education) to protests over Trayvon Martin and George Floyd and beyond. In late 2020 Omokha traveled over 13,000 miles (thirty states in thirty-two days); she spoke with 127 people and several of their stories are included. Omokha calls herself a storyteller ("drawn to the unsung. To the disenfranchised. To those often relegated to the shadows.") and says it is "important for me to make history personal." Her eloquent writing is filled with emotion: “Today's youth have become a generation forced to witness, from infancy, the perpetuation of injustice and the normalization of othering and subjugation. But in recent years, when such injustices occur, these atrocities pop up on their screens nonstop.” I learned much from Omokha’s book and the social justice efforts of people like Ella Baker, the Bates Seven at NYU, and defenders of the Jena Six, students at a Louisiana high school. Plus, she highlights numerous new – to me – details about other, more famous, activists or events (e.g., Obama’s 1981 speech against apartheid in South Africa). Omokha has included extensive notes and a helpful index. RESIST received a starred review from Booklist (“both incredibly detailed and accessibly readable … an essential text”).

New titles about the American Civil War

The first national observance of Memorial Day occurred on May 30, 1868. Then known as Decoration Day, the holiday was proclaimed to honor the Union soldiers who had died in the Civil War. Here are reviews of three excellent books which deal with the Civil War time period.

WIDE AWAKE is a newly published book by Jon Grinspan who is Curator of Political History at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History. Grinspan’s love of history and his devotion to scholarship shines through as he relates steps in his research on “The Forgotten Force that Elected Lincoln and Spurred the Civil War.” I was intrigued by his comments of looking into newspaper databases and was able to locate over one hundred and fifty front page newspaper articles from 1860 or earlier about this paramilitary group. They wore uniforms, had banners with a wide-open eye (see image of certificate below), marched (often with torches), and widely supported Lincoln and other Republicans in the 1860 election. Almost all ended up eventually joining the Union forces. Commenting on the echoes of history, and this “grassroots force pushing elite leaders into action,” Grinspan writes that the “Wide Awakes of 1860 wrestled with the same forces -- mass democracy, public protest, free speech, political violence, slavery, and race -- that we grapple with today.” Booklist gave WIDE AWAKE a starred review and Kirkus describes his well-written text as “a welcome study of an overlooked aspect of the Civil War and the events leading up to it.” Extensive notes and references comprise roughly twenty percent of this text.

THE AGITATORS by Dorothy Wickenden (Nothing Daunted) is about “three friends who fought for abolition and women's rights.” Readers may be familiar with stories about Harriet Tubman, a famous underground railroad conductor, but are likely less well-versed about Martha Coffin Wright, a Quaker (and sister to Lucretia Mott) who criticized Lincoln’s position on slavery and organized women’s rights conventions with Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. The third member of the trio is Frances Seward; as the wife of Governor, then Senator, and then Secretary of State William H. Seward, her influence was often largest behind the scenes. The three friends lived in Auburn, New York and Wickenden traces their efforts from the 1820s onward through 1875 in a detail-filled text. Her afterward, extensive notes, and selected bibliography together comprise at least a fourth of the book. THE AGITATORS received starred reviews from Library Journal (“Filling a gap in the telling of women's and abolitionist history, this highly readable book gives these three women their due.”) and Publishers Weekly (“an essential addition to the history of American progressivism”).

Finally, THE DEMON OF UNREST by Erik Larson (The Splendid and the Vile) is subtitled “A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War” and the best-selling author definitely chronicles the exploits of some unsavory characters. For example, Larson recounts James Henry Hammond’s sexual abuse of his nieces and subsequent selection to Federal office, serving as Senator for South Carolina. Often commenting on other parallels to today’s headlines, Larson writes, “I had the eerie feeling that present and past had merged. It is unsettling that in 1861 two of the greatest moments of national dread centered on the certification of the Electoral College vote and the presidential inauguration.” This text, too, is extensively researched with approximately twenty percent devoted to a lengthy bibliography and detailed notes. THE DEMON OF UNREST did receive starred reviews from Booklist and Publishers Weekly. While highly regarded, it did not feel as compelling as earlier works by Larson, however.

They Came for the Schools by Mike Hixenbaugh

It seems fitting to honor the 70th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision Brown v Board of Education (May 17, 1954) with a review of THEY CAME FOR THE SCHOOLS by Mike Hixenbaugh in which he writes about “One Town's Fight Over Race and Identity, and the New War for America's Classrooms.” Hixenbaugh’s credentials are impressive: senior investigative reporter for NBC News, named a Pulitzer Prize finalist, and won a Peabody Award for his reporting on the battle over race, gender, and sexuality in American classrooms. His debut is extremely well-written, if disturbing, as he skillfully details a history of school composition and curriculum restrictions in the Carroll Independent School District in Southlake, Texas, a Dallas suburb. By requiring large lots for housing, Southlake had essentially screened for wealth and race so that “three decades after Brown, America’s schools had effectively resegregated, perhaps not explicitly based on race, but according to wealth, geography, and social status.” Moving forward in time, Hixenbaugh recounts how a 2018 viral video with a racial slur prompted district officials to take action to establish a diversity program and the resulting backlash. Much of this has been presented in Hixenbaugh’s podcast: Southlake, critiqued here in Texas Monthly. His book also describes situations in Virginia, Florida and other states; plus, he chronicles the impact of national politics (and neighborhood PACs) on local school board elections and actions. There is a section on book bans: “without fail, parents leading this new phase of school board activism reported that they were merely fighting to shield their children from graphic sexual content that violated their family’s values. But many parents and activists were conflating references to gender identity and sexual orientation with sex and pornography.” Hixenbaugh is unflinching in presenting tough situations and the blow to quality teaching and to student well-being. His research is evident (roughly fifteen percent of the text is devoted to notes and bibliographic references) and this book deserves a wide readership.

Other commentary on THEY CAME FOR THE SCHOOLS:  The Washington Post review says, “This razor-sharp book is the masterful culmination of years of reportage.” And Publishers Weekly gave it a starred review, remarking, “an extraordinarily detailed analysis of current conservative thought and political activity.” But the most succinct is from Booklist, “This is a frightening but all too real piece of reporting, and belongs in every library.”

Children of a Troubled Time by Margaret A. Hagerman

CHILDREN OF A TROUBLED TIME by Margaret A. Hagerman is about “Growing Up with Racism in Trump's America.” Hagerman, an Associate Professor of Sociology at Mississippi State University, set out to interview students aged 10 to 13 “across race and class groups and geographically split between Mississippi and Massachusetts. She explores the attitudes and statements of these young people after the 2016 Trump election and the “regular anti-Black words and actions of the Trump White House.” Her research centered around key questions she identifies as: (1) How did children make sense of racism in the Trump era? What can we learn about whether and how dominant racial ideology shifts? (2) How do the political times in which kids experience their childhoods shape how they develop ideas about race and racism? And (3) Looking at the emotional component, what role do racialized, group-level emotions play in a racial learning process? Hagerman is clearly a scholar – she has won awards for previous writing (White Kids) and this latest text is full of footnotes with roughly a fourth of the text devoted to appendices, notes, bibliography, and index. However, she is not neutral, saying “As soon as Donald Trump took office, experts predicted that his presidency would negatively impact kids in the United States. They were right.” Her analysis is sometimes difficult to read because of the painful quotes she incorporates from students of all races, but it is worthwhile to do so, particularly since she was able to speak with students and include their reactions to the events of January 6th. As Hagerman says, “Listening to kids express dehumanizing racist ideas and think they’re normal really concerns me.” For more background, please see this review and interview posted by NYU (publishing press) or the article “Did kids become more racist under Trump?” published recently in New York magazine.  

An End to Inequality by Jonathan Kozol

AN END TO INEQUALITY by Jonathan Kozol is about “Breaking Down the Walls of Apartheid Education in America” with a call for reparations. Kozol is an award-winning, best-selling author of other titles like Savage Inequalities, Amazing Grace, The Shame of the Nation, and Rachel and Her Children. He has been writing about American schools since the mid-1960s and his recent text continues to present pleas for more equitable situations. Significant and disturbing statistics are woven throughout and he writes at length about “a parallel divide between two words of pedagogic practice and methods of instructional control: one of them a tightly wired code of discipline and training that is held to be appropriate for children of one class and race, the other with more space and time for children to take some joy in learning as an act of exploration.” In the final chapter, Kozol points to school libraries (and their absence) as another measure of how educational opportunities differ. He says, “in Chicago, only ten percent of schools in which Black children make up the largest proportion of the student population still have school librarians, according to an investigative study published in 2021 and cited in a lengthy piece of disturbing reportage by the Chicago Sun Times in 2022.” AN END TO INEQUALITY received a starred review from Kirkus. (“Most impressive is Kozol’s ability to draw connections among disparate events to illustrate the underlying systems driving the nation’s greatest inequities.”). Endnotes and sources encompass roughly a fourth of the well-researched text.

Latinoland by Marie Arana

LATINOLAND by Marie Arana is subtitled “A Portrait of America's Largest and Least Understood Minority.” Arana, a prolific author and finalist for the National Book Award, is very honest, creative and personal in her approach to this topic. She notes that “today one in five souls on American soil claims Hispanic heritage” and “we are not a unified people.” Her efforts to share her experiences and the stories of individuals like Carolyn Curiel or Ellen Ochoa add detail. However, as even she points out “one book cannot possibly capture the whole” and this necessarily broad brush tends to cloud summary conclusions. I had expected more data to be readily available and wish that Arana had been able to include more charts and graphs in addition to the sweeping historical reflection and moving stories she shares. LATINOLAND is extremely well-researched with Arana including copious notes that comprise almost a third of the text. Both Booklist and Kirkus (“an impressively wide-ranging overview”) gave Arana’s work a starred review.

Did you know that there are plans to open a National Museum of the American Latino on the National Capital Mall in 2035? There are so many interesting written works and resources available. Examples include Harvest of Empire (revised in 2022) by Juan Gonzalez, many of the books by Héctor Tobar, and (especially for high school readers) Living Beyond Borders (2021) edited by Margarita Longoria. The much older (2013) Latino Americans from Ray Suarez was also a series on pbs; the accompanying website features ideas for lesson plans and educational materials such as updated statistics from Pew Research Center.  Numerous schools and colleges have crafted libguides for Hispanic Heritage Month; one of the most comprehensive is from Rice University’s Fondren Library. No doubt Marie Arana (who disparages Nixon’s efforts to create the original week in honor of American Hispanics) would at least encourage more conversation around these materials; as she says, “although we account for more than half of the US population growth over the last decade … it seems as if the rest of the country is perpetually in the act of discovering us.”

Dangerous Charisma by Jerrold Post

DANGEROUS CHARISMA by Jerrold Post is about “The Political Psychology of Donald Trump and His Followers.” We have heard SO much about that in the past few weeks as the 2024 election cycle ramps up. It is extremely disconcerting. Post, who served multiple decades with the CIA and was the founding director of the Center for the Analysis of Personality and Political Behavior, divided his text into three sections: the Charismatic Leader, the Political Psychology of Trump’s Followers, and Trump’s Impact. In a chapter titled “The Quintessential Narcissist,” Post noted traits like inability to empathize with others, no constraint of conscience, paranoid orientation, unconstrained aggression, underlying insecurity, and extreme sensitivity to slight; he included numerous and varied examples relating to Trump. In a later section Post noted, “there is a quality of mutual intoxication for both sides, whereby Trump reassures his followers who in turn reassure him of his self-worth.” Another chapter, called “Permission to Hate,” chronicles how Trump’s “derogatory language has the power to inspire hate crimes” and “using hateful rhetoric toward already discriminated against groups helps make a climate where hate is more acceptable.” Numerous statistics support these assertions. This text was published in 2019 so that was prior to January 6, 2021. Post did not see that day (he died in late 2020), but in this book he acknowledged the possibility of Trump not accepting the election results. Post’s wife says, “He felt … that psychiatrists have a duty to warn.” Unfortunately, we see much of what Post predicted coming to the forefront of American politics again. Kirkus summed up DANGEROUS CHARISMA well: “A damning study of Trump’s mind that goes a long way toward explaining some damnably odd behavior.” More recently, The Washington Post published an article titled “Science is revealing why American politics are so intensely polarized” which, like Jerrold Post, turns to political psychology for explanations. It discusses tribalism and “othering, aversion, and moralization” to activate emotional responses.