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The Skin I'm In
Manage episode 330519673 series 2937778
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This episode finds us in the brutal halls of middle school with Maleeka Madison, a 12 year old girl struggling with self-esteem, peer pressure, and grief in Sharon Flake's The Skin I'm In. Flake's almost 25 year old award winning book takes a hard look at colorism, the burden of low expectations, and the importance of teachers who want to be in their classrooms and in their school communities. We discuss how casually cruel middle schoolers can be to each other, skewed power dynamics in friendships, and cycles of grief and trauma. We also try to figure out just how meta the message about the power of stories and the written word is in this book. Special guest Alicia D. Williams joins us to discuss her own writing about colorism and we use a game of MASH to predict Maleeka's future.
These Books Made Me is a podcast about the literary heroines who shaped us and is a product of the Prince George's County Memorial Library System podcast network. Stay in touch with us via Twitter @PGCMLS with #TheseBooksMadeMe or by email at TheseBooksMadeMe@pgcmls.info. For recommended readalikes and deep dives into topics related to each episode, visit our blog at https://pgcmls.medium.com/.
We mentioned a lot of topics in this episode. Here’s a brief list of some informative articles about some of them if you want to do your own further research:
Notes from the field - non-traditional route to classroom experiences: https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2013/09/i-quit-teach-for-america/279724/
Talking colorism with kids:
https://colorismhealing.com/brief-introduction-colorism-children-young-adults/
Chapters
1. The Skin I'm In (00:00:00)
2. Intro (00:00:09)
3. Guests (00:00:26)
4. What did this book mean to you? (00:00:43)
5. Plot Summary (00:02:27)
6. Author bio (00:04:08)
7. How did the book hold up? (00:05:17)
8. Depiction of colorism (00:06:48)
9. Writing contests and supportive teachers (00:08:43)
10. Depiction of 7th grade (00:09:26)
11. The kids that are being left behind (00:13:55)
12. On being treated like crap and choosing to care (00:14:47)
13. Peer pressure and Maleeka's relationship with Char (00:16:54)
14. Maleeka's mom (00:18:39)
15. Grief (00:20:46)
16. Charlese and JuJu (00:21:26)
17. Miss Saunders and choosing to teach (00:25:00)
18. Maleeka, body image, and self-esteem (00:29:10)
19. Caleb (00:31:06)
20. Romeo and Juliet (00:33:06)
21. Char & the twins (00:34:51)
22. More on Char (00:36:07)
23. Maleeka's writing (00:39:52)
24. Colorism then and now (00:43:41)
25. Colorism and Hollywood (00:45:54)
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