Aireale Rodgers in The TRiiBE: Eve L. Ewing’s ‘Ghosts in the Schoolyard’
This book review, authored by Pullias Center research assistant Aireale Rodgers, was originally published in The TRiiBE on Oct. 18, 2018.
This summer, two weeks before I moved to Los Angeles from my native Chicago for graduate school, doctors diagnosed my great-aunt Margie Britten with cancer. Two months later, she went into hospice care without much time left to live.
My great-aunt was the quintessential Black matriarch; she was strong, smart, resilient, and fiercely loving. As I listened to her voice on the other end of the phone, I felt guilty. I couldn’t stop apologizing for not being home, in Chicago, with her to say my final goodbye.
“Baby you’re doing what you’re supposed to be doing,” she began. “I’m so proud of you. Don’t worry about me. Just make sure you graduate for me.”
For many Black scholars, our careers in research are not an individual endeavor. We bring the lessons, hopes, and dreams of our communities with us into the ivory tower.
While reading sociologist and poet Eve L. Ewing’s new book, “Ghosts in the Schoolyard: Racism & School Closings on Chicago’s South Side,” my great-aunt’s words echoed throughout each chapter.
Read the rest of this book review in The TRiiBE .
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Aireale Rodgers is a research assistant at the Pullias Center for Higher Education and a PhD student in the Urban Education Policy program at USC Rossier School of Education.