The second row of photos revolves around Ari’s identity-forming through the people around him. Gee, Allen, and Clinton found in their study, Language, Class, and Identity: Teenager Fashioning Themselves Through Language, that not only is language incredibly significant for adolescent development, but the language certain teens use is associated with the ‘type’ of person they are, much like how Ari feels as though the boys at the pool are a different ‘type’ of masculine. This is evident in one of the earlier scenes in the story, when Ari overhears boys at the public pool make misogynistic comments about a woman lifeguard on duty. The center photo in the first row illustrates Ari’s constant questioning of masculinity and what ‘makes’ a man. Later in the story, we see a continuation of his development as he begins to open up more, eventually coming to terms with his identity and love for Dante. Ari chose to let the traumatic car accident live and fester inside him, reverting to silence in order to get by. In one of his first conversations with Dante after the surgery, Ari says “Rule number one: We won’t talk about the accident. The picture in the top right is indicative of this development too, representing Ari’s use of silence as a coping mechanism. Saenz wrote Ari as a young boy fascinated with having a life that was his own to live, which is a very common pattern of thinking and behaving for teenagers. Silverberg found in their study, The Vicissitudes of Autonomy in Early Adolescence, “Studies in the development of self-reliance… indicate that this aspect of autonomy increases steadily as youngsters move from the preadolescent to the late adolescent years” (p. Driving out to the desert and staring at the sky was method of self-reliance he could always depend on. He goes out of his way to ensure his autonomy, often jokingly referring to his mother as a fascist. This represents Ari’s psychological development of his independence. Anytime he wanted to clear his mind, the stars would provide an escape. The photo in the top left shows a starry night in the desert, a picturesque scene that Ari enjoyed viewing quite often. The top row of photos follows the idea of adolescent development. This will go hand in hand with the history of Black creators in the arts, and trace the story of their work through some of these iconic names. History takes us to the contemporary, and we will look at the Black artists today playing their part in the story of Black excellence and creativity with boldness and brilliance: including Kehinde Wiley, Bernardine Evaristo, and Kara Walker. We will highlight icons from across disciplines, and explore the work of Prince, Aretha Franklin, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Toni Morrison, and Miles Davis. We will also highlight history makers and trailblazers, whether those at the turn of the century like Duke Ellington and Billie Holiday, or those established at the legendary Black Arts Repertory Theater in Harlem, New York, and the creators the movement included: names such as Audre Lorde, Ntozake Shange, Thelonious Monk, James Baldwin, and Gil Scott-Heron. This month we will highlight Black artists on the platform who use their talents to promote not just Black excellence, but the Black experience. Reich (1992) estimated that three-fifths or more of workers would fall into the first category and, indeed, that has come true. Indeed, it can be argued that our current hyper-competitive, science- and technology-driven capitalism needs three classes of workers, leading to three classes of students: poorly paid service workers 'knowledge workers' who must bring technical, collaborative, and communicational skills to the workplace and commit themselves body and soul to the company and its 'core values' under conditions of little stability and, finally, leaders and 'symbol analysts' (Reich 1992 see also Reich 2000) who create innovations and 'core values' and who will benefit most from the new global capitalism (Drucker 1993 Gee et al. Our new global capitalism may well change the sorts of skills and values the society wishes to distribute to 'lower' and 'higher' 'kinds' of people, but, without strong resistance, it will not eradicate these 'kinds'. The most striking continuity in the history of literacy is the way in which literacy has been used, in age after age, to solidify the social hierarchy, empower elites, and ensure that people lower on the hierarchy accept the values, norms, and beliefs of the elites, even when it is not in their self-interest or group interest to do so (Gramsci 1971).
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