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Mini Book Review by Rob ScottOne of our former students, who is also a tireless organizer, has now published his first full-length book: a collection of stories from his recent years studying history, travelling, organizing resistence, and thinking critically in response to the racist institutions of this country. When I first met Taylor Sparrow, we were at a conference hosted by the Lemp Neighborhood Arts Center, in the notoriously blighted east-side of St. Louis — he attended our School for a few years after that, then moved on to create an anarchist publishing project, then started a grassroots education effort to undermine racism and economic oppression, then eventually moved to New Orleans to work at the (officially “failing”) Frederick Douglass High School. This book was compiled before Hurricane Katrina put the racialized oppression of the 9th ward in the national consciousness. The cover of the book juxtaposes a decaying New Orleans home from before the hurricane with a depiction of the Haitian Revolution. It is both a history book and a book that looks to the future. |
| We don’t get a lot of historians at the School for Designing a Society. When Taylor Sparrow was in Urbana, he made a project of formulating language that speaks about the past in such a way that the present day reality is challenged to change. When he brings up the Haitian Revolution, John Brown, the Highlander Folk School, etc., it is with a keen awareness that the 2007 iteration of liberation education is a project to be designed. As Kalamu Ya Salaam puts it in the Foreword: “The construction of our future is a problem of memory.” This book will be a helpful tool for those who wish to create a different society, with an awareness of the violence of the inherited structures of “race” and class that have shaped the way we live with one another in the current society.The book is 185 pages, $10 from Eberhardt Press. |
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