Storytelling for Social Justice ─ Connecting Narrative and the Arts in Antiracist Teaching

Through accessible language and candid discussions, Storytelling for Social Justice explores the stories we tell ourselves and each other about race and racism in our society. Making sense of the racial constructions expressed through the language and images we encounter every day, this book provides strategies for developing a more critical understanding of how racism operates culturally and institutionally in our society. Using the arts in general, and storytelling in particular, the book examines ways to teach and learn about race by creating counter-storytelling communities that can promote more critical and thoughtful dialogue about racism and the remedies necessary to dismantle it in our institutions and interactions. Illustrated throughout with examples drawn from high school classrooms, teacher education programs, and K-12 professional development programs, the book provides tools for examining racism as well as other issues of social justice. For every teacher who has struggled with how to get the "race discussion" going or who has suffered through silences and antagonism, the innovative model presented in this book offers a practical and critical framework for thinking about and acting on stories about racism and other forms of injustice.

Lee Anne Bell is Professor and Barbara Silver Horowitz Director of Education at Barnard College, Columbia University.