Young Black Boys Research Articles

"I Have More Friends That Died Than Fingers and Toes": Service Utilization Needs and Preferences for Violence and Substance Use Prevention Among Young Black Boys and Men.

Young Black men (YBM) disproportionately face the most severe forms and consequences of youth violence (YV) and substance use disorders, but are less likely to access and be retained in services for these high-risk behaviors. Investigating service uptake disparities and the role of barrier-reducing intervention delivery models is essential; so is understanding the service needs and preferences of YBM. This study explores the experiences of violence-involved and substance-disordered YBM and service providers working with them from racially and economically diverse communities, focusing on their service needs and preferences. Additionally, we examine the potential benefits and drawbacks of digital health interventions in addressing crucial structural barriers to service access and promoting equity for Black boys in high-violence environments. Individual interviews were conducted with 16 YBM (selected from a larger pool of 300 participants from a pilot study) and 7 service providers (four females, three males). Data analysis utilized an Interpretive Description (ID) approach guided by the Phenomenological Variant of Ecological Systems Theory (PVEST). Four themes emerged: (1) Revolving Doors and Histories of Violence; (2) Benefits of Violence: "You Do Something to Me, I Do Something to You"; (3) Positive and Negative Perceptions of Violence and Substance Use Prevention Programs; and (4) Need for Equity-Focused and Barrier-Mitigating Digital Health Interventions. Our findings identified avoidance mechanisms utilized by YBM at both individual and community levels and highlighted perceptions of existing community-based programs and digital interventions as crucial tools for mitigating barriers to care. This study also confirms the prevalence of critical service gaps and program uptake issues, even in cities with abundant programs. Thus emphasizing the need for equity-focused interventions co-designed with and for YBM in high-violence and substance use contexts.

Reconsidering vulnerability, history, and our postmodern condition in Colson Whitehead's The Nickel Boys

AbstractThis paper analyzes Colson Whitehead's The Nickel Boys (2019) by exploring the consequences of an uneven distribution of vulnerability in relation to both historical and contemporary contexts. This study emphasizes the significance of this depiction in comprehending the enduring effects of racial oppression and institutional disparities. This means that while all humans are inherently vulnerable, systemic inequalities make some people more vulnerable and less protected than others. Whitehead depicts the experiences of the young black boys at the Nickel Academy as heightening their vulnerability, the more they embrace resistance. The novel points to the notion that political structures not only establish hierarchies and inequalities among individuals but also place them in a position of inherent vulnerability, judged by preconceived notions of permanent inferiority and inequality. Ultimately, Whitehead depicts vulnerability as a method of uncovering the truth and fighting for justice by giving voice to the black perspectives that have been marginalized and silenced throughout history.

Who Benefits from Your Ignorance? Visualizing Black (Super)Heroism and Refuting Respectability Politics in Victor LaValle’s Destroyer

ABSTRACT: In Victor LaValle’s 2018 collected comic book Destroyer , the limits of respectability politics and the goals of representation for Black characters are both tested. Destroyer focuses on the death and rebirth of a young Black boy named Akai, who is murdered by police while walking home; his mother, a descendant of Victor Frankenstein and a researcher working on nanotechnology and reanimated life, brings him back in a “super” powered form. In the graphic narrative’s depiction of Black heroism and struggle, its radical politics and its visual work deny the peacemaking impulse of respectability politics that have been linked to the representation of Black characters in comics and other sequential art. This essay traces how Destroyer rejects respectability politics, explores the often-disregarded righteous rage of Black women, and conveys its protest of the premature death Black people are vulnerable to on a regular basis through a highly referential and often intertextual graphic narrative. LaValle’s comic ultimately embraces the rage, heroism, and humanity of its Black characters in its speculative approach to the issues of life and death that it is in conversation with throughout its panels and pages.

More than Teacher Bias: A QuantCrit Analysis of Teachers’ Perceptions of Young Black Boys’ Noncognitive Skills

Abstract Studies of racial bias document how racial meanings shape human perceptions and interactions in a variety of social institutions, including education. However, few sociologists connect quantitative evidence of racial bias to sociological theories of racism. Consequently, quantitative analyses of teacher racial bias are frequently decontextualized. This paper uses national data on kindergarteners to examine racial/ethnic disparities in teacher perceptions of boys’ noncognitive skills. We find evidence of teacher racial-gender bias that casts young Black boys as more often exhibiting poorer noncognitive skills as compared to their non-Black peers. Interestingly, we find no difference between teachers’ ratings of Black and non-Black boys’ interpersonal skills. We analyze our findings using sociological theories of racism. By doing so, we provide a Du Boisian framework for interpreting evidence of racial bias in education. We also discuss the implications of our paper for contextualizing racial biases in other social institutions.

African Vernacular Symbols of Black Intersex Children in Sinethemba Ngubane's Installations (2007-2016)

African Vernacular Symbols of Black Intersex Children in Sinethemba Ngubane's Installations (2007-2016)

Stolen Dreams: The 1955 Cannon Street All-Stars and Little League Baseball’s Civil War by Chris Lamb

Reviewed by: Stolen Dreams: The 1955 Cannon Street All-Stars and Little League Baseball’s Civil War by Chris Lamb Robert Greene II Stolen Dreams: The 1955 Cannon Street All-Stars and Little League Baseball’s Civil War. By Chris Lamb. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2022. Pp. xxii, 344. $34.95, ISBN 978-1-4962-1945-9.) The history of sport in American life has long been an important place to explore how race, sectionalism, and politics collide. While books such as Jules Tygiel’s Baseball’s Great Experiment: Jackie Robinson and His Legacy (New York, 1983) and Adrian Burgos Jr.’s Playing America’s Game: Baseball, Latinos, and the Color Line (Berkeley, 2007) showcase the interplay of sport, cultural, and political histories, Stolen Dreams: The 1955 Cannon Street All-Stars and Little League Baseball’s Civil War offers another excellent example of this approach. For Chris Lamb, the story of the Cannon Street All-Stars is a stand-in for the larger story of the civil rights struggle in South Carolina. Describing this story of young Black boys who were not allowed to compete in South Carolina’s Little League tournament due to Jim Crow segregation as “inextricably linked to postwar Charleston,” Lamb has written an important history of a Little League ball club and a narrative of Charleston’s long and vexed history of racism (p. 3). The civil rights movement’s history was partially shaped by Jackie Robinson’s 1947 desegregation of Major League Baseball. Whether one argues for a “long civil rights movement” thesis or posits that the civil rights movement as we know it began in the mid-1950s, it is clear that Robinson’s symbolism was a crucial marker for Black American activists and their white liberal allies. The story of the Cannon Street All-Stars, like the slow desegregation of the majors after Robinson’s arrival, illustrates the halting pace of desegregation across American society in the 1950s and 1960s. As Lamb points out, the Cannon Street All-Stars were denied the right to play against white teams in South Carolina just a year after the Brown v. Board of Education (1954) decision. In another historical irony, the team traveled to Williamsport, Pennsylvania, to accept an invitation to watch the Little League World Series—after being denied a chance to play for it—the same week that Emmett Till was murdered in Mississippi. One of the strengths of Lamb’s work is his ability to tie the earlier history of Charleston as a slave port and a flashpoint during Reconstruction to the plight of the Cannon Street All-Stars. For instance, Lamb highlights the Charleston Baseball Riot of 1869. Sparked by a confrontation on a baseball diamond between Black baseball fans and Charleston police, it became both a moment when the Reconstruction-era dreams of Black Americans were confronted with the reality of powerful support for white supremacy and an example of how much baseball was intertwined with American political struggles during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Lamb does an exemplary job of showing how the Cannon Street All-Stars served as a nexus of both change and continuity in South Carolina’s history of racism. For example, he reminds the reader that the white teams’ refusal to play the Cannon Street All-Stars led to the creation of Dixie Youth Baseball, a segregated youth league that “didn’t become integrated” until after its founder’s death, and that continues to play tournaments today (p. 197). He also points out that the Cannon Street All-Stars became an example of how the public [End Page 382] memory of the past is actively shaped by the public. Lamb tells the story of researcher Augustus Holt, whose investigation into why Dixie Youth players (including his son) wore Confederate flags on their uniforms in the early 1990s led to his becoming a prominent voice for greater recognition of the All-Stars in Charleston. Stolen Dreams works as a history told at the intersection of sports, civil rights, and southern memory, reminding readers of how often those fields are closely woven together. Robert Greene II Claflin University Copyright © 2023 Southern Historical Association

Radical healing in psychotherapy: Addressing the wounds of racism-related stress and trauma.

There is a large body of research on the importance of addressing culture in psychotherapy. However, less is known about providing critically conscious and racially affirmative therapy for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) clients in the context of ongoing systemic racism and racism-related stress and trauma, especially in the sociopolitical context of the United States. This article introduces and illustrates the Keeping Radical Healing in Mind Therapeutic Approach using a sample therapy session. To contextualize the therapeutic approach, we outline the need for antiracist and liberatory approaches to psychotherapy and describe in detail the Psychology of Radical Healing theoretical framework. The clinical stance that underpins the Keeping Radical Healing in Mind Therapeutic Approach includes helping clients develop, internalize, and nurture (a) Critical Consciousness, (b) Cultural Authenticity and Self-Knowledge, (c) Radical Hope and Envisioning Possibilities, (d) Collectivism, and (e) Strength and Resistance. To better meet the needs of BIPOC clients, the stance requires clinicians to develop their critical consciousness of systemic racism and interlocking forms of oppression. The clinical case of "Brenda," a Black woman experiencing the effects of racism-related stress while raising a young Black boy, is presented. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Metaphors

Is it possible to overcome societal pressures and interact genuinely with neighbors? In this philosophical short story, an elderly white woman who lives as a minority in a predominantly black neighborhood is targeted with a urine-filled water balloon in front of her home. The message is clear: she is no longer welcome in this racially charged environment. Zion, the young black boy who lives next door, has known her his entire life and they have been friends. He has helped her with small chores around the house. Zion advises her to leave the neighborhood. As time passes, Zion visits less frequently, and eventually returns the pile of sweaters she had knitted for him over the years. A "good metaphor," she says. This story is a part of our legacy-of-excellence program, first printed in After Dinner Conversation - December, 2020 issue.

Racial discrimination and the negative impact on African-American as depicted in the short film “JIM”

Jim is a comedy short film in YouTube. This short film is produced by Chris Black. Jim short film talks about a young Black American boy named ‘Charles’, he experienced an implicit racism in his class. The main topic of this paper is the racism action towards the main character. The research problems of this paper are the levels of racism that experienced the Black American child and what is the negative impact of racism to Black American child that depicted by a differential opportunities that got by Charles. The theory that used in this paper is the theory levels of Racism by Camara Phyllis Jones. Camara Phyllis Jones defined racism as a structure of opportunity (education, housing, jobs, justice) also assigning value (worthy or unworthy, full of potential or full of menace) established on the social interpretation of race that made a disadvantage impact on the individual and communities victim, weaken the power of the all society by the waste of human source. For the methods that used is the descriptive qualitative methods. The goals of this paper are to know the levels of racism that experienced by the Black American child and to understand the negative impact of the racism. In this film Charles experienced a three levels of racism, specifically are the institutionalized, personally mediated, and internalized. The entire of the three levels of racism gives a negative impact to the Charles’s mental health and personality. On this paper the authors found that the racial discrimination that got by Charles made a several impact to Charles’s mental health and personality. It proves that a racial discrimination is giving a bad impact to the victim.

‘For a good [civic] purpose?’: Black immortal teachings of citizenship

Black experiences and discourse concerning citizenship are unique. Moreover, Black access to full citizenship is often a matter of life and death. The civic purposes driving this pursuit are often negated in conventional curriculum and pedagogy, especially in early childhood settings. Still, it is essential for educators and policymakers to understand the civic purposes that initiate and sustain civic engagement. The purpose of this study is to amplify the voices of young Black boys in regards to US citizenship. By employing notions of in the wake/wake work as the theoretical framework and curricular and pedagogical resuscitation (CPR) as the methodology, this study unearthed the power of children to examine the complexities and ironies of citizenship. More so, these first- and second-grade students linked Black citizenship to fundamental issues of life, death, and purpose. Ultimately, the authors call for instruction reflecting how for students, especially Black students, honorable civic purposes striving for full citizenship remain valued, respected, and enduring.

“But there is a God”: Teaching Nat Turner in early childhood education

This study set out to gain a deeper understanding of how early childhood students, specifically Black boys in first and second grade, would respond to the teaching of historical figures and events traditionally omitted from classrooms. Contrary to general assumptions, these students were able to astutely contribute to classroom lessons, discussions, and interviews about Nat Turner, an enslaved Black American, who led a rebellion in 1831. Employing notions of Black intellectual thought and curricular and pedagogical resuscitation as theoretical frameworks, in addition to critical hermeneutic phenomenology as its methodology, this study highlights the voices of young Black boys often missing in early childhood discourse. Findings indicate that the students expressed a favorable assessment of Nat Turner and his comrades. The statement, “But there is a God,” ultimately confronts the unavailability and restricted options for Black humanity in a racist society, but also an awareness testifying to a self-ordained defense of the Black body. This study gives added perspective to the understanding of the early learning process, cultural meaning-making, and connection to a Black educational legacy spanning generations.

Tinea capitis

THE COMPARISON Areas of alopecia with erythema and scale in a young Black boy with tinea capitis. He also had an enlarged posterior cervical lymph node (arrow) from this fungal infection. White patches of scale from tinea capitis in a young Black boy with no obvious hair loss; however, a potassium hydroxide preparation from the scale was positive for fungus. A subtle area of tinea capitis on the scalp of a Latina girl showed comma hairs.

The Queerness of Touch: Mutual Recognition and Deep Intimacy in Moonlight

The Queerness of Touch: Mutual Recognition and Deep Intimacy in <i>Moonlight</i>

Connection, Antiblackness, and Positive Relationships That (Re)Humanize Black Boys’ Experience of School

Background/Context: Black people continue to be popularly imagined as lacking humanity and, as such, are often the disproportionate subjects of unceasing race-gender terror and state violence. A vast body of scholarship has documented the failure of schools to adequately serve Black youth in general, and Black boys and men in particular. There is compelling evidence, however, that consistently humanizing interactions with adults in school lead to positive relationships that in turn may protect against Black boys’ experience of school as fundamentally dehumanizing. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study: This study examined the significance of positive relationships between Black boys and adults in school as they move(d) across the P–16 education pipeline. The study is guided by the following primary research question: How do young Black men and boys describe and understand their interpersonal relationships with adults in P–16 schools? Research Design: A descriptive phenomenological approach was used to understand how 28 Black boys and young men discuss and describe the characteristics of relationships with adults in their school or university. Seven video- and audio-recorded focus groups were conducted. Data analysis occurred in three phases. Video clips from focus groups were analyzed in the first phase of data analysis. During the second phase of our data analysis, researchers employed critical race theory as a key analytic perspective to interpret the data for what they revealed about the ways anti-Black racism and white supremacy structured schooling experiences. The third phase of analysis centered on coding the entire data set, regardless of grade band, for three specific types of interactions: disciplinary/behavioral, social/relational, and academic. Findings/Results: Key findings from the study center on (a) these participants’ keen awareness of the ways their words/behavior/actions are generally misread and misunderstood in U.S. society and (b) the significance of educators’ race-gender perceptions of them in building positive relationships that establish and sustain authentic human connections. Conclusions/Recommendations: Human connection emerges over time and differentiates what our participants ultimately perceived as “good”/positive relationships from “bad”/negative relationships with educators. Recognition of the residual consequences of U.S. chattel slavery for the ways we see, know, and understand Black people and Black children is essential to cultivating positive relationships with Black boys. Although “bad” relationships are characterized by interactions reflecting racial misandry that Black boys come to expect as a normal, ordinary feature of their schooling experience, positive relationships are evidenced through consistently humanizing interpersonal interactions with adults that actively counter harmful racial scripts.

Individuals Transforming Criminal Justice

This photo series explores the origins of how misconceptions such as one-dimensional expressionand emotional inaccessibility have come to be. I specifically explore the complexity of African American masculinity for young Black boys and Black men.

Reimagining Early Childhood Classrooms as Sites of Love: Humanizing Black Boys through Head Rubs and “ Playin’ the Dozens ”

Black boys in American schools are often subjected to crisis narratives that negatively impact teacher-student relationships. However, two Black male early childhood teachers in New York City have reimagined teacher-student relationships which can be used to inform the future education of Black boys post-pandemic. Central to their reframing of teacher-student relationships between Black male teachers and Black boys is a focus on the importance of nurturing social and emotional health. This manuscript highlights how these two Black male teachers foster positive relationships with their young Black boys, empowering Black boys to see themselves as capable learners.

Enhancing Engineering Identity Among Boys of Color

Black and Brown men continue to be underrepresented in engineering. One explanation for the dearth of Black and Latino men in engineering is that engineering (and STEM) identity often is not inclusive of People of Color. As a result, Black and Brown boys may be less likely to become interested in STEM subjects. The purpose of this study, then, was to investigate how the components of one afterschool engineering program tap into engineering identity formation among fourth- and fifth-grade Black and Brown boys. Leveraging research on the STEM and engineering identity, we argue that the program and its key components play both constructive and protective roles. This study comprises a case study of an afterschool engineering program completing its third year of implementation at three elementary schools. Over four semesters, we recruited approximately 60 students from the three schools and 21 mentors to participate in the study. We collected data via one-on-one interviews, focus groups, and observations. We found that engineering design activities are constructive, offering the young Black and Brown boys opportunities to engage with the work of engineers. The mentors played constructive roles by recognizing the students’ engineering work. The mentors also played a protective role, buffering against identity interference and cultivating a sense of belonging. We conclude by discussing how the findings contribute to existing research on engineering identity and making recommendations for practice.

Tarell Alvin McCraney: Theater, Performnce, and Collaboration ed. by Sharrell D. Luckett et al.

Reviewed by: Tarell Alvin McCraney: Theater, Performnce, and Collaboration ed. by Sharrell D. Luckett et al. Khalid Y. Long TARELL ALVIN McCRANEY: THEATER, PERFORMNCE, AND COLLABORATION. Edited by Sharrell D. Luckett, David Román, and Isaiah Matthew Wooden. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2020; pp. 272. Tarell Alvin McCraney: Theater, Performance, and Collaboration is the first book-length study to dedicate critical attention to the creative works of awardwinning playwright, director, and performer Tarell Alvin McCraney. The book features a meticulously researched career chronology, an astute introduction, eleven chapters devoted to examining McCraney's body of work by a stellar roster of interdisciplinary scholars, a roundtable with McCraney's fellow artists and collaborators, and a concluding interview with McCraney and the book's editors. The collection begins with coeditor Sharrell Luckett's chronology of McCraney's professional career beginning with his birth in 1980 in Miami, Florida, followed by significant moments in his artistic career trajectory. These include his appointment as assistant director of the youth theatre company Village Improv (founded by Tea Castellanos in 1995) and his being named a MacArthur "Genius" Fellow in 2013. Luckett ends the chronology in the year 2019, when McCraney's professional achievements hit an all-time high, including his Broadway debut with Choir Boy; the production of Ms. Blakk for President, co-written with Tina Landau at Steppenwolf Theatre Company in Chicago, in which he played the title role; the premiere of his film High Flying Bird; and the premiere of the television series David Makes Man on the Oprah Winfrey Network. Following Luckett's chronology is coeditor Isaiah Matthew Wooden's "Ogun Size Enters; or, An Introduction," a companion to Luckett's chronology that provides further context from McCraney's life. Biographical highlights include his growing up in the poverty-stricken area of Miami's Liberty City, his first acts of storytelling inspired by his grandfather's weekly church sermons, and his early engagement with socially conscious performance-making working alongside Castellanos. In all that he has traversed, maintains Wooden, McCraney—like his characters—has remained "an outlier who live[s] in the other America" (7; emphasis in original). As such, McCraney's "outlier" status as a young Black queer boy from the economically stagnated Liberty City serves as a thematic pulse for McCraney's creative works and, therefore, as an effective framing for this anthology. Wooden mentions that August Wilson had a "tremendous impact on McCraney's artistic development," so much so that "critics were rushing [End Page 449] to hail McCraney as Wilson's heir apparent" (8). While McCraney has forged a path that diverges from Wilson's influence, he has nonetheless taken up many of the themes found in Wilson's work, including Black geography and Black spirituality. These are the topics theorized in the first three essays in part 1, "Space, Faith, and Touch." In her essay, for example, Donnette Francis examines Mc-Craney's engagement with the historical geography of Miami that is "drawn into hemispheric as well as national racializations of power" (21). In the following chapter, Patrick Maley finds a critical approach to religion within McCraney's plays, particularly in Head of Passes and Wig Out!, which he contends are steeped in a "dramaturgy of hope" that "constantly reinvestigates questions of religion, making crises of faith perpetually present, unconcluded, and potentially fulfilling to the characters" (50). Coeditor David Román continues this discussion of McCraney's "audacious investigation of faith and theatrical form" (58) through a close reading of Head of Passes and Choir Boy. In the process, Román finds another parallel between McCraney and Wilson in the opportunities they provide Black actors to perform fully realized characters on regional stages. Several essays within the collection focus on McCraney's engagement with queer subjectivities and queer performativity. Bryan Keith Alexander, for example, argues that while Wig Out! is an homage to ball culture and drag competition, the play offers discernment about the "rejection of the presumed normative expectations or limitations of male expressivity" (70). In the following chapter, Katherine Nigh demonstrates how McCraney disrupts the "dominant narrative on Hurricane Katrina" by placing a queer character at the center of his contribution to The Breach...

Paradoxes of white moral experience

Paradoxes of white moral experience

Integration and Inequality: Mid-1900s Midwest American History, As Told by Modern Youth Literature

Integration and Inequality:Mid-1900s Midwest American History, As Told by Modern Youth Literature Heather J. Matthews (bio) Cline-Ransome, Lesa. Finding Langston. Holiday House, 2018. 112 pp. $10.99 pb. ISBN 9780823445820. Cline-Ransome, Lesa. Leaving Lymon. Holiday House, 2020. 208 pp. $17.99 hc. ISBN 9780823444427. Cutler, Jane. Susie Q Fights Back. Holiday House, 2018. 112 pp. $6.99 pb. ISBN 9780823439935. As I approach reviewing three children's texts on the subject of race and representation, many Americans are taking to the streets to protest lifetimes of brutality and inequality that stifles Black people and a legal and judicial system that continues to be unequal and unfair. Racism, however, is not just an issue for adults—children are affected by issues of racial and ethnic inequality, and yet many adults are unwilling to talk about these realities with children. In reviewing Susie Q Fights Back, Finding Langston, and Leaving Lymon, it became clear to me that texts such as these need to be available to young readers to facilitate discussions with them about race. Adults must be willing to have difficult and uncomfortable discussions about race and inequality with children, and it is my belief that the above texts can be tools to aid in this discussion. These three middle-grade texts tackle difficult topics with effective and appropriate writing and without minimizing the harsh realities of the American Midwest in the mid-1900s. These fictional, first person novels feature brave and realistic characters doing their best in a system that privileges white children over children of colour. The main characters must come to grips with the fact that they are forced into a place within society, and each must decide for themselves what concepts such as equality, justice, and fairness truly mean. Despite any number of odds stacked against them, such as systemic racism or generational poverty and trauma, each main character struggles and perseveres to create a space for themselves. [End Page 188] Jane Cutler's Susie Q Fights Back, published in hardcover as Susan Marcus Bends the Rules, tells the story of Susan Marcus, a young white girl who has just moved from New York City, New York, to Clayton, Missouri, with her mother and father. Set in the year 1943, Susie is thrust from the diverse northern city she calls home to a small midwestern town where Jim Crow laws are still strictly enforced. Readers learn that Susie is Jewish, and she befriends a young white Christian girl in her building named Marlene as well as a young Black girl who lives close by named Loretta. Susie, Marlene, and Loretta quickly develop a friendship based in the indignation that Loretta is not treated the same as Susie and Marlene, and the three girls set out to "defy" Jim Crow. The girls take a stand together, finding a legal loophole in the segregation rules that allows them to elude legal restrictions and celebrate their friendship in public. The author, Jane Cutler, modelled some of this story on her own experiences as a young white Jewish girl who moved from New York to the American Midwest as a child. Susie Q Fights Back, a PJ Our Way book, was promoted by the PJ Library, which—along with the middle-school branch of PJ Our Way—sends books with Jewish content to families in Canada and the US free of charge ("What Is"). As a PJ Our Way book, Susie Q Fights Back was a promoted title distributed to young readers. Lesa Cline-Ransome's Finding Langston and Leaving Lymon exist in the same universe as one another and thus share some settings and characters. Cline-Ransome, a Black author, first wrote Finding Langston, which tells the story of Langston, a young Black boy who has recently moved from a small town in Alabama to Chicago with his father. The impetus for their move, the recent death of Langston's mother, haunts both father and son, as both miss her in their own ways. Compounding this fact, as he is still wearing his Alabama "country clothing" and speaking with his Alabama accent, Langston finds socializing in school difficult. Adding to Langston's school troubles is his...