1/27/2024 0 Comments Spoken word writer![]() Echoing Joe, Fisher argues that this linguistic “gumbo” contains not just a lovely “magic” of rhythm and tone, but also the “money” that young people need to make their way through the day (45). Bronxonics, we learn, includes elements of both African-American Vernacular English and Puerto Rican- and Dominican-inflected Spanish. ![]() Chapter 4, “We Speak in all Tongues: The Politics of Bronxonics” is thus particularly useful as a reminder of the power of “non-standard” English to name the communities in which we live. She writes, “the role of a worthy witness is keeping the naming actions of the community intact” (17). It is in this tradition of witnessing that Fisher places herself as she passes on Joe’s and the students’ idiolect. It also makes the case that Joe’s role as a literacy educator places him in the tradition of community memory-keepers, people like the book and magazine vendors of Greenwich Village, respected as “old heads” for the wisdom they have earned through their own experience and through witnessing the experiences of their fellows (83). One of her research questions probes the degree to which the literacies that operate in these spaces intersect with those in the titular urban “classrooms.” Thus, Writing in Rhythm takes public ground not just when Joe Ubiles acquaints his students with the Nuyorican Poetry Café, the Cloisters, the Upper West Side, the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens, or the Apollo Theater. The book’s title might suggest that its message applies only to schools, but Fisher’s previous works have addressed the knowledge and practices of poets working open mics at neighborhood institutions, particularly Black-owned bookstores in Northern California. ![]() But she wears that learning lightly and uses it to illuminate the day-to-day of the workshops. Her authority is often on display, as when she frames her observations with educational theories, such as Freire’s participatory classroom, and history. Fisher’s ethnography is a pleasure to read, with a brisk and vivid delivery of the poetry workshops and thick description of the cultural contexts that inform them. Fisher watches, and occasionally jumps in, as Ubiles leads a spoken-word class called Power Writers. In Writing in Rhythm: Spoken Word Poets in Urban Classrooms, Maisha Fisher documents the year she shadowed Joseph Ubiles, a high school teacher and coalition builder in the Bronx. For these authors, poetry is a rhetoric that at once celebrates the vernacular and builds coalitions amongst disenfranchised groups. By tracing the roots of contemporary spoken-word poetry to hip-hop, blues, and the Black Arts movement, both studies suggest that poetry has long bridged out-of-school and school-based literacies. Fisher and Jocson both make the case that those involved in public rhetoric and community-based literacy ought to pay more attention to poetry, particularly that created by urban youth.
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