Brave. Black. First. 50+ African American Women Who Changed the World by Cheryl Willis Hudson, Illustrated by Erin K. Robinson

Where to begin? The art? The featured women? The succinct amount of information? Brave. Black. First. is the perfect balance of visual and informational text for a reader reading on a middle-school level and above. Each of the featured women in the book has a full page portrait adjacent to a short biographical page. The selected subjects include both historical and contemporary black women of varying renown. Sojourner Truth, Serena Williams and Ava DuVernay are just a few examples of the wide range of women included. The inclusion of mixed heritage women is also welcomed to provide a mixed-race aspect for the reader. Students who love art, history, or that want to learn about female historical figures should be sure to pick this one up.--Claudio Leon

Hudson, Cheryl W., Brave. Black. First. 50+ African American Women Who Changed the World. New York: Penguin Random House LLC, 2020. Print.

It's Official: Passages' Students Book Named to Top Ten & listed in School Library Journal's February 2021 Issue

 It's official:  Passages' students' book, Everything I Been Through, has been selected as one of the ten best books for marginalized youth by In the Margins' annual list.  You can read all about it here.

Our partners as 826NYC have kindly made the publication available to all with an internet connection via Issuu.  You can now read Everything I Been through here. 

Very special thanks to 826NYC's Volunteer and Community Coordinator, Summer, for doing that!--Jessica Fenster-Sparber

Congratulations!

The heartiest of congratulations to our students, mostly former, whose publication, Everything I Been Through, has been selected as one of the top ten titles for the 2021 In the Margins booklist!  We are so proud of you: Ezequiel, Jonathan, Logan, Kymani, Efaree, Andrew, Zaid, Jerry Lewis, Marcus, Joshua, Stanley, Rasheen, Domonique, Indika, Shaquille, Jared, Taylor, Judah, Melahki, Kylik, Andres, Christian, Quashawn, Maximus, Jamaud, and Maurice.

Published one year ago this week, Everything I Been Through comprises roughly two dozen student voices in one beautiful, slim volume published by 826NYC.  The writing grew from creative writing workshops taught in the fall of November 2019 and December 2019 by visiting teaching artists Vanessa Freedman and Emily Pollock, who collaborated with Belmont's faculty, centrally Ms. Erica Nadel, Ms. Jessica Ernyey, Ms. Nelli Bespalova-Carter, Ms. Melissa Amitrano, and Mr. Bret Senft, as well as Ms. Elaine Latham, Reading Specialist Hermithe Bernard, and Speech Language Pathologist Lori Ikawa, under the leadership of Assistant Principal Ron Carter and Co-Principals Yvette Baxter-Sweet and Shareef Rashid.

From ITM: "In the Margins’ charge seeks to highlight the best fiction and non-fiction titles (Pre-K through Adult) of high-interest appeal for readers ages 9-21, with a preference for marginalized books (small, independent press or self-published).  [Their] primary focus is on the narratives and informational text the disproportionality of injustices caused to BIPOC youth from the historical impact of cultural irrelevance and structural exclusion which often find members of these diverse ethnicities navigating through and living disproportionately in poverty, in the streets, in custody, or in a cycle of all three." 

We look forward to the official publication of the list on February 9th and will post the link here when it's up.  Very special thanks once again to Literacy for Incarcerated Teens for providing the crucial funding that made this partnership possible.--Jessica Fenster-Sparber