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Document Type

Book Review

Abstract

With a passionate commitment to her participants’ stories, Maisha T. Winn provides an opportunity for her readers to engage with the everyday experiences of student artists and their teachers whom she came to know in Girl Time, a theater program designed for girls incarcerated in juvenile detention centers and girls who had been formerly incarcerated. Based on interviews with the teaching artists, student artists, and participant observation, this three-year, multi-sited ethnographic work offers representational breadth and a chance to engage with the discourses of a small group of women committed to social justice and the girls they serve. Winn takes her readers into the workshops and performances in the detention centers, shares the reflections of Girl Time’s co-founders and teaching artists, and offers examples from the scripts the girls produced. Committed to the study and work of critical literacies, Winn celebrates the pedagogy of Girl Time, which is student-centered, and the possibility of critiquing monolithic stereotypes that position young girls of color. She argues that Girl Time provides a space for student artists to engender multiple narratives of experience through their creation of ensembles, plays, and performances, and through talking back. Represented evocatively in five acts, Winn provides compelling accounts of the work teaching artists and student artists completed together in a setting too often disregarded or ignored by educators and policy makers—juvenile detention centers.

Genre/Form

articles

Subjects - Topical (LCSH)

Prison theater--United States; Women prisoners--Education--United States; Women prisoners--Recreation--United States; Critical pedagogy--United States

Subjects - Names (LCNAF)

Girl Time (Program)

Geographic Coverage

United States

Language

English

Format

application/pdf

Type

Text

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