Sheds light on the ways urban youth engage in meaning-making experiences as a way to assert critical, creative, and highly sophisticated perspectives on teaching, learning, and survival. Kinloch uses a critical teacher-researcher lens to propose new directions for youth literacies and achievements. The text features examples of classroom engagements, student writings and presentations, discussions of texts and current events, and conversations on skills, process, achievement, and underachievement.

Valerie Kinloch is associate professor in literacy studies at The Ohio State University. In addition to her other books, she has recently published Urban Literacies: Critical Perspectives on Language, Learning, and Community and Harlem on Our Minds: Place, Race, and the Literacies of Urban Youth.