Reading for Their Life: (Re)Building the Textual Lineages of African American Adolescent Males

"Because African American adolescent males and face their own challenges, they must identify texts that mark their times and their lives. If we create opportunities for this to happen, they will not only begin to trust the texts, they will begin to trust us, too. Then maybe, we’ll hear one of them say, Education is on our side,’ or, ‘I used to keep it gutter, but now I am all good.’ This is my hope."  ―Alfred Tatum

No reading strategy, no literacy program, no remediation will close the achievement gap for adolescent African American males. These efforts will continue to fail our students, says Alfred Tatum, until reading instruction is anchored in meaningful texts that build academic and personal resiliency inside and outside school.

In Reading for Their Life Tatum takes a bold step beyond Teaching Reading to Black Adolescent Males. He shows how teachers can encourage adolescent African American males to connect with reading by defining who they are through textual lineages―texts with significance, carefully chosen for instruction because they are useful to young black males and because they matter. With works ranging from Up from Slavery and Sounder to the contemporary Handbook for Boys, Tatum helps you:

• understand what adolescent African American male readers need
• select enabling texts that have worked in Tatum’s own teaching
• build textual lineages by putting meaningful texts at the core of a challenging curriculum
• engage readers in the curriculum through essential questions, writing, and self-assessment.

"African American males are not engaged in a great conspiracy to fail themselves," writes Tatum. "They continue to underperform in school as they wait for educators to get it right.” Join Alfred Tatum, use Reading for Their Life, and strive for “a way to squeeze enabling texts for every ounce of possibility they contain for advancing the literacy development of African American adolescent males."

Get more information on the state of education for African American males, read Yes We Can: The 2010 Schott 50 State Report on Black Males in Public Education.

Michael Smith is coauthor with Jeffrey Wilhelm and Michael Smith of Get It Done!; Oh, Yeah?!; and So, What’s the Story?. Michael, a professor in Temple University’s College of Education, joined the ranks of college teachers after 11 years of teaching high school English. He has won awards for his teaching at both the high school and college levels. His research focuses on understanding how experienced readers read and talk about texts as well as what motivates adolescents’ reading and writing out of school. He uses that understanding to think about how to devise more effective and engaging reading and writing instruction  for adolescents in school. 

Michael has cowritten or coedited three other Heinemann books, Going with the Flow;  Reflective Teaching, Reflective Learning; and “Reading Don’t Fix No Chevys”. For Chevys he and coauthor Jeff Wilhelm received the NCTE David H. Russell Award for Distinguished Research in the Teaching of English.

When he’s not working, Michael’s likely to be watching or talking about sports, reading, or playing with his granddaughter.

Alfred Tatum is the author of the Heinemann titles Reading for Their Life and its DVD staff development companion Reading and Writing for Resiliency. Alfred’s textual lineage includes such works as Black Boy, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, and A Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglas. He grew up in the Ida B. Wells housing projects in Chicago, embracing literacy as a way out of violence and poverty. Today his research and advocacy are aimed at advancing the literacy development of adolescents, and especially African American boys in urban communities. Alfred is the author of the NCTE James N. Britton Award–winning Teaching Reading to Black Adolescent Males, an associate professor in the Literacy, Language, and Culture Program at the University of Illinois at Chicago, Director of the UIC Reading Clinic, and a former middle school teacher and reading specialist.