Synopses & Reviews
Teens in America's inner cities grow up and construct identities amidst a landscape of relationships and violence, support and discrimination, games and gangs. In such contexts, local environments such as after-school programs may help youth to mediate between social stereotypes and daily experience, or provide space for them to consider themselves as contributing members of a community.
Based on four years of field work with both the adolescent members and staff of an inner-city youth organization in a large Midwestern city, Pride in the Projects examines the construction of identity as it occurs within this local context, emphasizing the relationships within which identities are formed. Drawing on research in psychology, sociology, education, and race and gender studies, the volume highlights the inadequacies in current identity development theories, expanding our understanding of the lives of urban teens and the ways in which interpersonal connections serve as powerful contexts for self-construction. The adolescents’ stories illuminate how they find ways to discover who they are, and who they would like to be in positive and healthy ways in the face of very real obstacles. The book closes with implications for practice, alerting scholars, educators, practitioners, and concerned citizens of the positive developmental possibilities inherent in youth settings when we pay attention to the voices of youth.
Review
“Pride in the Projects will be a valuable resource for those interested in engaging a holistic view of the everyday lives of youth and serves as a powerful reminder of the knowledge gained when we privilege the voices of those we are striving to understand.”
-The Journal of Youth and Adolescence,
Review
"This book offers fresh perspectives on a range of issues."
-Choice,
Review
"Recommended for professionals in every field who work with urban youth as it offers valuable insight into teens' formation of identity and the factors that can influence that development."
-VOYA,
Review
"The most powerful and original book on adolescent development read in recent years... beautifully written, rigorously researched and passionately argued."
-University of Virginia,
Review
"This is the most powerful and original book on adolescent development I have read in recent years. Pride in the Projects is beautifully written, rigorously researched, and passionately argued."
"This book offers fresh perspectives on a range of issues."
"Recommended for professionals in every field who work with urban youth as it offers valuable insight into teens' formation of identity and the factors that can influence that development."
"The most powerful and original book on adolescent development read in recent years... beautifully written, rigorously researched and passionately argued."
“Pride in the Projects will be a valuable resource for those interested in engaging a holistic view of the everyday lives of youth and serves as a powerful reminder of the knowledge gained when we privilege the voices of those we are striving to understand.”
Review
"For anyone who has ever wondered about the differences between metaphor and metonym or a trochee and a dactyl, this compact, well-organized handbook promises to be useful." -Library Journal,
Synopsis
Poetry: An Introduction is an accessible and clearly written introduction to the structural and methodological principles underpinning poetry and its study. It aims to equip the student, researcher, and general reader with a body of technical information that will sharpen and deepen their engagement with individual poems.
Strachan and Terry provide a lively map through what might on first experience seem the most daunting aspects of poetry: poetic sound effects, rhythm and meter, the typographic display of poems on the page, the language of poetry, and the use made by poets of techniques of comparison and association. The book's discussion of poetic terminology is allied throughout to illustrative readings that show the usefulness of the terminology in approaching particular poems; its emphasis is always a practical one, demonstrating how poems actually work.
Beginning with an historical overview of the development of English poetry from its earliest origins and finishing with an authoritative dictionary of poetical terms, Poetry: An Introduction is an indispensable guide to the understanding of poetry.
About the Author
John Strachan is principal Lecturer in English at the University of Sunderland.
Richard Terry is Reader in English at the University of Sunderland.