About

Literature, Writing, and History Curriculum Content for Educators, Students, and the People

“The paradox of education is precisely this – that as one begins to become conscious, one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated.” – James Baldwin

The purpose of this blog is to organize Literature, Writing, and History curriculum content for educators, students, and the people so that critical thinking resources are more widely accessible. Ideally, this site will become a collaborative space where knowledge and information in these areas are shared with the goal of bringing educational resources to all.

The focus of the content organized here is to subvert mass media messaging and resist systems of oppression by analyzing the literature, personal narratives, memoirs, essays, poems, films, writing and art of those historically disenfranchised, discriminated against and stigmatized by colonialism, government, mainstream society and mass media.

Specifically, the content organized here aims to center the lives, voices and work of indigenous cultures before colonization, and aims to center the modes of survival, creativity, ingenuity, subversion, and healing that these communities use to resist the violence of colonization, decolonization and neocolonialism. So much of the literature and history taught in American schools today is rooted in Euro-centrism and the normalizing of capitalism, patriarchy, Christianity, and white supremacy, which are oppressive constructs that uphold systems of oppression. De-centering the history and writing of Europe demands space not only for the tremendous histories, voices, art, writing, beliefs and culture of so much of the world, but supports an imagining and enacting of a society committed to equity and freedom through the overthrowing of systemic oppression.

In this present moment in the United States of America where systemic oppression is created by governments that seek to defund public education, close Ethnic Studies departments and Mexican American Studies Departments, where government officials spew hate speech and develop laws to protect hate speech, where governments and corporations collaborate to incarcerate more Black people and people of color than ever before, where police terrorize and kill Black people and people of color, where government attacks the citizenship of Black people and people of color (see also: DACA), and where governments use border patrol to terrorize and kill predominantly indigenous-Latino people at the border of the USA and México (see also: USA Border Patrol emptying water supply sources intended for people crossing high temperature Sonoran Desert), curriculum and educational resources that tell these truths while aiming to empower the history of native and indigenous people are crucial to affect change and to encourage avenues for healing.