Strong-Wilson, Teresa. (2008). Bringing Memory Forward: Storied Remembrance in Social Justice Education with Teachers. Reviewed by Patricia H. Hinchey, Pennsylvania State University

Strong-Wilson, Teresa. (2008). Bringing Memory Forward: Storied Remembrance in Social Justice Education with Teachers. New York: Peter Lang. Pp. 186     $30     ISBN 978-0-8204-8874-5 Reviewed by Patricia H. Hinchey Pennsylvania State University July 21, 2008 Like many others, Teresa Strong-Wilson is concerned with the important issue of “white teacher resistance”—the difficulty white teachers have acknowledging race and privilege as integral components of their life experience, identify formation and perceptions. In Bringing Memory Forward, the author first analyzes the source of such resistance and then sets about constructing a pedagogical process to address it: What are white teachers so attached to that makes such self-critique difficult? Further, what kinds of processes could be set in motion to bring these attachments into question, but in such a way that the learner (here, the teacher) does not feel alienated and paralyzed by her “thoughtlessness” but instead moved to think and act? (p. 2) The text works to answer these questions through autobiographical analysis, recent theorizing, and teacher action research. A slight adjustment in a common quote can serve as a one-sentence summary of the author’s thinking: “How do I know who I am until I see what I’ve said?” That is, Strong-Wilson believes that an analysis of stories—primarily stories we tell about ourselves—offers promising pedagogy for reducing resistance. She posits that when we write narratives of our experience, our choices in such areas as content, wording and literary devices provide material we can question in order to work toward greater self-awareness. Integral to this process is identifying what she calls “touchstones,” or particular stories that we cherish, that we return to again and again. Critically interrogating our stories and placing them next to counter-stories—stories of others that offer alternative worlds—can produce a disequilibrium that often leads to new understandings. Modeling the kind of analysis she promotes, the author­ (a white Canadian) devotes the first three chapters to probing her own autobiographical work, “Ravenwing: A White Teacher’s Experiences of Living and Teaching within a First Nations Community.” In the first chapter, she explores how her “preoccupation” with geography in “Ravenwing” (her exile to the wilderness) suggests traces of a colonial mentality that she explicitly denies in her narrative. She also details the ways in which the narrative functions as allegory for other teachers, a “how to get through this dangerous territory” guide much like Pilgrim’s Progress (p. 21). Chapter 2 explores the implications of such elements as setting (most often community spaces, not classrooms) and genre, the latter echoing teacher travel narratives and female travel narratives, including typical strains of “feminitopia.” Chapter 3 is a detailed analysis of Northrop Frye’s influence on her own intellectual development, most especially how Frye’s concept of “garrison mentality” ( a “terror of the soul” in regard to nature) has served as one of her own touchstones, influencing not only her life choices but also inevitably her imagination. By providing counter-stories in this chapter (an Indigenous depiction of nature, a parody of the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden), Strong-Wilson helps illuminate their role in the analytical process she portrays. The extensive and detailed analysis in these chapters demonstrates how a close look at autobiographical writing allowed the author to identify elements that embed previously unacknowledged cultural influences and perspectives. Chapter 5 begins moving away from Strong-Wilson’s own experiences to those of teachers she worked with. Generally, the chapter explores the role of counter-stories in discomfiting teachers and moving them to consider how Indigenous peoples were constructed in their early experiences. Chapters 6 and 7 delve deeply into the concept of touchstones (those stories to which we are most attached) and how they acquire their power, theorizing about “sources of attachment.” Chapter 8 explores the impact of new technologies and new modalities of “text,” including how technology may affect touchstone stories and whether it is likely to significantly change imaginary renderings of the Other. Chapter 8 is a brief, simple, and simply told summary of everything before, a brief glance at how her own work with her own stories—her look back at memory—allowed her to move forward into new mental landscapes and stories. As I turned the last page, what struck me most was the relative simplicity and accessibility of the book’s close, a stark contrast to the dense chapters that had preceded it. The work is replete with specialized terminology that may come easily to the author but that presents obstacle after obstacle to the reader trying to follow the sense of the discussion: currere; phronesis; nachträglichkeit; sprezzatura; topos; mythoi; rerum urum factum. Of course there are times when terms from other languages are exact in ways not possible in English, but the frequency with which such terms occur in this text suggest that is not the case here. Not only does the work rely heavily on extremely specialized terminology, but it also includes frequent and unexplained references to other writers whom readers may not know. For example, Strong-Wilson says of a sentence from Grumet, “Gerard Manley Hopkins would exult over her crafting of sound with sense” (p. 11). Here, the author not only assumes that her readers will experience the line as she did, but also that they will know the work of a nineteenth century English, Jesuit poet well enough to understand her meaning. It seems as if either the writer felt the need to earn credibility by stressing the breadth and depth of her knowledge, or she assumed that all readers will have the same background knowledge and specialized vocabulary that she does. The first seems unlikely, since having the book published already confers considerable credibility. Who, then, is the intended audience? The book appears in the Complicated Conversation series (edited by William Pinar), and given that context, it may make sense for Strong-Wilson to assume a fairly sophisticated readership. However: it’s not clear what kind of expertise is assumed. As a reader, I brought to the text: extensive formal study of language and literacy (and so familiarity with references to folks like Hopkins, Rosenblatt, Sartre and Camus); extensive experience in teacher education (and familiarity with research on teacher thinking, the difficulties of white resistance, and writers like Britzman and Grumet); and, familiarity with philosophy (especially critical theory and its emphasis on Freire’s “conscientization”). Still: the reading was slow and frustrating. I had to activate background knowledge from different and constantly shifting fields of expertise, sometimes even from sentence to sentence (as when Grumet’s autobiography became entangled with Hopkins’ poetry). For me, the end result of the dazzling display of erudition was frustration that each sparkling term or reference slowed me down, detoured me away from my main goal of simply understanding and following the author’s thinking as she detailed a complicated but interesting theory. I think the writing style is an unfortunate choice, because I believe Strong-Wilson’s essential ideas about the potential role and benefits of autobiography and counter-story in teacher education classrooms have considerable potential. To use the ideas, however, teacher educators will first need to understand them. Without already knowing their way around literature, reader response theory and assorted other fields, however, readers may not have the perseverance, or even simply the time, to work their way through this text. Specialists already comfortable in this domains, however, may well find it insightful and instructive. About the Reviewer Pat Hinchey is Associate Professor of education at the Worthington Scranton campus of Pennsylvania State University, where she teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in education theory and policy, race and gender, action research, and media literacy. She is a research fellow of the Education Policy Research Unit at Arizona State University and of the Education and the Public Interest Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Her most recent books are Becoming a Critical Educator (2004) and Action Research (2008), both published by Peter Lang.