Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools

By Monique Morris and Monique W. Morris

Book Overview

The "powerful" (Michelle Alexander) exploration of the harsh and harmful experiences confronting Black girls in schools, and how we can instead orient schools toward their flourishing

On the day fifteen-year-old Diamond from the Bay Area stopped going to school, she was expelled for lashing out at peers who constantly harassed and teased her for something everyone on the staff had missed: she was being trafficked for sex. After months on the run, she was arrested and sent to a detention center for violating a court order to attend school.

In a work that Lisa Delpit calls "imperative reading," Monique W. Morris chronicles the experiences of Black girls across the country whose complex lives are misunderstood, highly judged--by teachers, administrators, and the justice system--and degraded by the very institutions charged with helping them flourish. Painting "a chilling picture of the plight of black girls and women today" (The Atlantic), Morris exposes a world of confined potential and supports the rising movement to challenge the policies, practices, and cultural illiteracy that push countless students out of school and into unhealthy, unstable, and often unsafe futures.

At a moment when Black girls are the fastest growing population in the juvenile justice system, Pushout is truly a book "for everyone who cares about children" (Washington Post).

Book cover photograph by Brittsense/brittsense.com.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1620973421
• ISBN13: 9781620973424
• Release Date: January 2018
• Publisher: New Press
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.4" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

Essential Reading for All Teachers of Black Girls

If you work in a school as a teacher, paraprofessional, custodian, principal, chef, or receptionist, you should read this book. This book illuminates the real-world impacts of prejudice, stereotypes, and violence against black women. When I did my student teaching, a young black woman showed me this book and told me about her experience going to jail for 1 night after a fight her senior year of high school. This traumatic experience really hurt her, but I just felt shocked. After reading this book I saw how common it was. Only through deep love, intersectional feminism, and education (through this book) can we begin to redistribute our LOVE and social resources to black girls. Thank you Monique Morris, Ed.D.