Your Average Nigga: Performing Race, Literacy, and Masculinity

by Vershawn Ashanti Young

Overview

An engrossing autobiographical exploration of black masculinity as a mode of racial and verbal performance.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780814335765
Publisher:	Wayne State University Press
Publication date:	03/01/2007
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	NOOK Book
Pages:	192
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Vershawn Ashanti Young is assistant professor of rhetoric and African American world studies at the University of Iowa.

Editorial Reviews

In an engaging style, Young mixes narrative autocritography, his mother's tongue and wit, analysis of literature on race, African American history, and language and literacy studies to argue against the dominant ideological model of literacy and for a theory of code meshing-a 'technique [that] meshes versions of English together in a way that's more in line with how people actually speak and write anyway.' Although he knows code meshing is not a panacea, he sees it as one way to improve the retention rates and achievement of black students in higher education. Read Young. Argue with him. Take him to task. You may not agree with his every point, but you will come away from this book thinking deeply about racism, sexuality, class, gender, their role and yours in the teaching of literacy."

associate professor of English and applied linguistics at Pennsylvania State University and author of Hiphop Literacies - Elaine Richardson

Vershawn Young's Your Average Nigga has the ingredients of a good novel: dazzling prose, a seductive plot, and a critical and likeable narrator. Beyond its wonderful storytelling, however, this manuscript is undergirded by a provocative theorizing about racial, gender, and sexual identity vis-à-vis language use."

associate professor of performance studies and African American studies at Northwestern University and author of Appropr - E. Patrick Johnson

Punctuated throughout with verve, passion, and rigor, Vershawn Ashanti Young's Your Average Nigga is a smart and provocative addition to the burgeoning field of black masculinity studies."

associate professor of African-American studies at Duke University and author of New Black Man - Mark Anthony Neal

The ironic title of this sociological autobiographical presentation of the dilemma in which many upwardly mobile blacks find themselves says it all. Including solid illustrative material, it is a compelling and thought-provoking piece of work."

Choice

Your Average Nigga is a brilliantly constructed book that is as equally captivating as it is intellectually stimulating. What's especially appealing about Your Average Nigga is that is can be used in a number of disciplines from Linguistics to American Studies because of the complex lens in which Young explores literacy and identity."

Souls

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