Quick! Need biography recommendation for book report

[Momgonepostal]

Also posted in the lounge...

My husband is taking a class for a teaching credentional and he needs to do a book report by THIS FRIDAY on either a biography or autobiography. The book needs to be something that would be helpful for a teacher, something that might give insight into how to better meet the needs of certain types of students, maybe...?

My first thought when he told me this was Angela's Ashes, by Frank McCourt, but then my husband said the professor advised choosing a book about a person of color.

Anyway, so we need 1. biography/autobiography, 2. subject must be a person of color 3. something that might be useful for a teacher.

Any ideas?

[evlbstrd]

1. Damn, Angela's Ashes would be excellent.

Poverty crosses color lines. And the Irish were know as the *'s of Europe.

[Momgonepostal]

15. I thought it fit the bill well, too

The professor specifically asked him and another white student to pick a book about a person of color. I think the prof. is trying to broaden horizons.

[BrklynLiberal]

2. John Hope Franklin

http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/franklin/bio.html



John Hope Franklin is the James B. Duke Professor Emeritus of History, and for seven years was Professor of Legal History in the Law School at Duke University. He is a native of Oklahoma and a graduate of Fisk University. He received the A.M. and Ph.D. degrees in history from Harvard University. He has taught at a number of institutions, including Fisk University, St. Augustine's College, North Carolina Central University, and Howard University. In 1956 he went to Brooklyn College as Chairman of the Department of History; and in 1964, he joined the faculty of the University of Chicago, serving as Chairman of the Department of History from 1967 to 1970. At Chicago, he was the John Matthews Manly Distinguished Service Professor from 1969 to 1982, when he became Professor Emeritus.

Professor Franklin's numerous publications include The Emancipation Proclamation, The Militant South, The Free Negro in North Carolina, Reconstruction After the Civil War, and A Southern Odyssey: Travelers in the Ante-bellum North. Perhaps his best known book is From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African-Americans, now in its seventh edition. His Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities for 1976 was published in 1985 and received the Clarence L. Holte Literary Prize for that year. In 1990, a collection of essays covering a teaching and writing career of fifty years, was published under the title, Race and History: Selected Essays, 1938-1988. In 1993, he published The Color Line: Legacy for the Twenty-first Century. Professor Franklin's most recent book, My Life and an Era: The Autobiography of Buck Colbert Franklin, is an autobiography of his father that he edited with his son, John Whittington Franklin. His current research deals with "Dissidents on the Plantation: Runaway Slaves."

Professor Franklin has been active in numerous professional and education organizations. For many years he has served on the editorial board of the Journal of Negro History. He has also served as President of the following organizations: The American Studies Association (1967), the Southern Historical Association (1970), the United Chapters of Phi Beta Kappa (1973-76), the Organization of American Historians (1975), and the American Historical Association (1979). He has been a member of the Board of Trustees of Fisk University, the Chicago Public Library, and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association.

Professor Franklin has served on many national commissions and delegations, including the National Council on the Humanities, from which he resigned in 1979, when the President appointed him to the Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy. He has also served on the President's Advisory Commission on Ambassadorial Appointments. In September and October of 1980, he was a United States delegate to the 21st General Conference of UNESCO. Among many other foreign assignments, Dr. Franklin has served as Pitt Professor of American History and Institutions at Cambridge University, Consultant on American Education in the Soviet Union, Fulbright Professor in Australia, and Lecturer in American History in the People's Republic of China. Currently, Professor Franklin serves as chairman of the advisory board for One America: The President's Initiative on Race.

Professor Franklin has been the recipient of many honors. In 1978, Who's Who in America selected Dr. Franklin as one of eight Americans who has made significant contributions to society. In the same year, he was elected to the Oklahoma Hall of Fame. He also received the Jefferson Medal for 1984, awarded by the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education. In 1989, he was the first recipient of the Cleanth Brooks Medal of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, and in 1990 received the Encyclopedia Britannica Gold Medal for the Dissemination of Knowledge. In 1993, Dr. Franklin received the Charles Frankel Prize for contributions to the humanities, and in 1994, the Cosmos Club Award and the Trumpet Award from Turner Broadcasting Corporation. In 1995, he received the first W.E.B. DuBois Award from the Fisk University Alumni Association, the Organization of American Historians' Award for Outstanding Achievement, the Alpha Phi Alpha Award of Merit, the NAACP's Spingarn Medal, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In 1996, Professor Franklin was elected to the Oklahoma Historians Hall of Frame and in 1997 he received the Peggy V. Helmerich Distinguished Author Award. In addition to his many awards, Dr. Franklin has received honorary degrees from more than one hundred colleges and universities.

Professor Franklin has been extensively written about in various articles and books. Most recently he was the subject of the film First Person Singular: John Hope Franklin. Produced by Lives and Legacies Films, the documentary was featured on PBS in June 1997.

[bobbieinok]

20. his family was caught in the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921

http://technicianonline.com/story.php?id=000350

....

Franklin's topic, "The Tulsa Race Riots of 1921: Reflections of a Near Victim and a Historian," will offer the facts, as well as a personal account, of our nation's deadliest, yet least publicized, racial conflict.

....

People don't have the opportunity to hear a figure of the caliber of John Hope Franklin speak very often, Tam said. The Park Scholars hope to "make people think about and discuss ."

During the Tulsa riots, thousands of white people destroyed almost 35 square blocks of an affluent, black business district and left as many as 300 African Americans dead. For over 70 years, however, the race riots were kept out of the public's eye.

The Tulsa Race Riot Commission was created in 1997, allowing new details of the riots and the heinous crimes committed during that time to continue to surface.

Franklin, age six at the time of the race war, will speak this evening on the events that preceded the Tulsa Race Riots, as well as on its incredible impact on the community, on the black citizens of Tulsa and on his own personal development.

more....

[bobbieinok]

21. double post

[Fovea]

3. With the popularity of Lance Armstrong

Here is a good one on Major Taylor. A great African American cyclist from the last century.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0801853036/104-8729841-9495950?v=glance

[izzybeans]

4. How about Teaching to Transgress by bell hooks

It's not totally autobiographical but it is about her experience and philosophy as an educator.

http://www.akpress.org/1996/items/teachingtotransgress

[intheflow]

8. I posted the same book

at the same time!

[izzybeans]

12. Cool!

:thumbsup:

To think I was hesitant. Up on Paulo Friere? I need to trackback and read Pedagogy of the Oppressed, though I've read it through secondary sources.

[intheflow]

23. I'm actually not an educator.

I came accross hooks in seminary, believe it or not, in a class on ministry and religious education. Needless to say, I had an uber-cool professor. The other educator we read a lot on was Parker Palmer, and we also had a week devoted to Gardiner's multiple intelligences.

But my son is in college now, about ready to start a masters program, working toward his Ph.D. to teach college history. I think a book called Pedagogy of the Oppressed sounds interesting and something he might also be interested in. Thanks for the book pick!

[izzybeans]

24. I may be wrong, but this may have something to do with the

liberation theology movements of South America.

[GreenPoet64]

5. Jaime Escalante

Math teacher who motivated Latino youth from Garfield High in Los Angeles to excel in calculus:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0894907638/102-0904100-6174539?v=glance

[Sydnie]

6. Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0451192036/102-1218601-6701767?v=glance


edited to add - Story of a white man who pigments his skin and lives in the south BEFORE the civil rights movement. It Chronicles his experiences. Great story and gives a completely different perspective on this subject.

[intheflow]

7. "Teaching to Transgress: Education As the Practice of Freedom"

By bell hooks.

Amazon.com link

This is a book about teaching, but also about bell hooks, a black feminist educator. She relies a lot on her personal experience as a teacher to talk about education and the mind/body split that has happened in academia. Engagingly written, challenging theory, and by a woman of color.

From Publishers Weekly
Cultural theorist hooks means to challenge preconceptions, and it is a rare reader who will be able to walk away from her without considerable thought. Despite the frequent appearance of the dry word "pedagogy," this collection of essays about teaching is anything but dull or detached. hooks begins her meditations on class, gender and race in the classroom with the confession that she never wanted to teach. By combining personal narrative, essay, critical theory, dialogue and a fantasy interview with herself (the latter artificial construct being the least successful), hooks declares that education today is failing students by refusing to acknowledge their particular histories. Criticizing the teaching establishment for employing an over-factualized knowledge to deny and suppress diversity, hooks accuses colleagues of using "the classroom to enact rituals of control that were about domination and the unjust exercise of power." Far from a castigation of her field, however, Teaching to Transgress is full of hope and excitement for the possibility of education to liberate and include. She is a gentle, though firm, critic, as in the essay "Holding My Sister's Hand," which could well become a classic about the distrust between black and white feminists. While some will find her rejection of certain difficult theory narrow-minded, it is a small flaw in an inspired and thought-provoking collection.

[Mz Pip]

9. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down

by Anne Fadiman.

It's not really a biography but it is a true story of the culture clash between a Hmoung family living in the central valley in CA and their American doctors who are trying to treat their young child for epilepsy.

I thought it was an amazing book and would be a good read for someone who is looking for insight into a different culture.

Mz Pip
:dem:

[Momgonepostal]

18. You know, I've read this and think it's excellent

We're also in Central CA, so it's very applicable to what his teaching experience will be. I think he's going to go with this one.
Thank you very much for suggesting it!

[firefox]

10. I would suggest Helen Keller

I would suggest Helen Keller to reflect on the times she lived in and her anarchist views. She helped found the ACLU. But she also wrote an autobiography and if an autobiography speaks to you it is very fun reading. You can get the highlights of her life very easily on the Internet. Here is a link to a Google search for Helen Keller http://tinyurl.com/d9vdk

The first result- http://womenshistory.about.com/cs/kellerhelen/p/helen_keller.htm - is a one page summary of her life and it should tell you if you want to go down that road. It says For the rest of her life, Helen Keller worked for improving education for the blind, deaf, and mute. She traveled and lectured extensively, even in vaudeville (1922-24).

[Talismom]

11. I found the book "Lovesong" by Julius Lester to be amazing!

Google it. Good luck!

[Poiuyt]

13. I always thought that George Washington Carver was a fascinating person

I don't have a specific book though.

[Carolab]

14. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. n/t

[Momgonepostal]

22. I've been on the library waiting list for this for a couple of weeks

I've heard it's fantastic.

[Carolab]

25. It is. It's a classic. And very applicable to today. n/t

[bobbieinok]

16. in high school or college I read a biography abt Mary McLeod Bethune

a black woman........it was very impressive

[Journeyman]

17. Maya Angelou, "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings". . .

n/t

[Momgonepostal]

19. Thank you to all who responded!

He says he's going with "The Spirit Catches you..." I appreciate all your suggestions. A few of these will be going on my own "to read" list.

Thank you!

[Sacajawea]

26. "His Excellency" by Joseph Ellis.

An "excellent" new biography of George Washington. I thought it was superb. (Isn't white a color?)

[Momgonepostal]

27. umm, yep!

You're right, of course, but I don't think he wants to make an issue of this.