Transformative Language Arts in Action
Edited by Ruth Farmer, Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg
Publication date:
26 November 2014Length of book:
230 pagesPublisher
Rowman & Littlefield PublishersDimensions:
239x163mm6x9"
ISBN-13: 9781475810592
Transformative Language Arts, an emerging field and profession, calls on us to use writing, storytelling, theater, music, expressive and other arts for social change, personal growth, and culture shift. In this landmark anthology, Transformative Language Artists share their stories, scholarship and practices for a more just and peaceful world, from a Hmong storyteller and spoken word artist weaving traditions with contemporary immigrant challenges in Philadelphia, to a playwright raising awareness of AIDS/HIV prevention.
Read the stories, consider the questions raised, and find inspiration and tools in using words as a vehicle for transformation through essays on the challenge of dominant stories, public housing women writing for their lives, histories and communities at the margins, singing as political action, the convergence of theology and poetics, women's self-leadership, embodied writing, and healing the self, others, and nature through TLA.
The anthology also includes “snapshots,” short features on transformative language artists who make their livings and lives working with people of all ages and backgrounds to speak their truths, and change their communities.
Read the stories, consider the questions raised, and find inspiration and tools in using words as a vehicle for transformation through essays on the challenge of dominant stories, public housing women writing for their lives, histories and communities at the margins, singing as political action, the convergence of theology and poetics, women's self-leadership, embodied writing, and healing the self, others, and nature through TLA.
The anthology also includes “snapshots,” short features on transformative language artists who make their livings and lives working with people of all ages and backgrounds to speak their truths, and change their communities.
When you take writers and poets into areas where real people are dealing with real life problems and traumas, with humble joys, renewing their hope in life, having expressive breakthroughs—that is the gift to all of us. This allows real people to tell their stories, to share their grief and gratitude, to untwist the dark silence that wraps their hearts and lengthen it out into a sonnet, a narrative poem, a celebratory lyric—that is essentially what language and words are for.
What these writers have done is nothing short of challenging the stale models of writing to and for other writers, other poets entrenched in the moldy hallways of academia. When writing breaks down the doors, when writing is used to really reach across the dark chasm and speak out, call by name the ghosts that lurk there and invoke one's own power with fearless defiance, well, then, that is truly writing from the heart, writing that is mapped and charted to define and explore our human experience. That is what this book does, and I applaud the editors, the writers and poets. So impressive is this volume that every high school child and every citizen should have it in their backpacks and book shelves.
What these writers have done is nothing short of challenging the stale models of writing to and for other writers, other poets entrenched in the moldy hallways of academia. When writing breaks down the doors, when writing is used to really reach across the dark chasm and speak out, call by name the ghosts that lurk there and invoke one's own power with fearless defiance, well, then, that is truly writing from the heart, writing that is mapped and charted to define and explore our human experience. That is what this book does, and I applaud the editors, the writers and poets. So impressive is this volume that every high school child and every citizen should have it in their backpacks and book shelves.