Book Review: Cultivating genius: An equity framework for culturally and historically responsive literacy by Muhammad G

Imagine attending a class. Then, months later, you find yourself feeling voiceless, because your learning experiences and social interactions inside the classroom do not represent or acknowledge your true identity. Thus, you constantly feel alienated as you sit at your desk. You do not see yourself in what you read, write, and talk about with your teacher and classmates. Eventually, you realize that who you are—including the values, beliefs, knowledge, and lived experiences that you hold—are not acknowledged or valued inside the classroom. Shortly after discovering that your voice is not embraced or even recognized in class, you also realize that your cultural identity is gradually transforming. In fact, your teacher has been forcing you to abandon your beliefs, knowledge, and lived experiences to officially become a member of society's most “elite” organization—mainstream America. It is a society that values and respects only the beliefs, norms, customs, traditions, rituals, and knowledge of White middle- and upper-class America (Lyiscott, 2019).

Unfortunately, this scenario represents present-day life in America's public schools for millions of children and youth of Color¹ (see Emdin, 2016; Gay, 2018; Ladson-Billings, 1994; Nieto, 2010). Despite this reality, we remain hopeful in the belief that change is soon upon us, as does Dr. Gholdy Muhammad in her book, Cultivating Genius: An Equity Framework for Culturally and Historically Responsive Literacy. Dr. Muhammad's book aims to inspire K–12 educators, including pre-and in-service teachers, paraprofessionals, school leaders, principals, curriculum writers, and academic coaches, to transform our public schools and fight for equity and excellence through literacy in the same way as the Black literary societies of the 19th century once did for its members. In this book review, we invite you, our fellow readers, to explore and learn more about Dr. Muhammad's Historically Responsive Literacy (HRL) framework, which “is a universal teaching and learning model that helps teachers cultivate the genius within students and within themselves and teach in ways that create spaces for mutual empowerment, confidence, and reliance” (Muhammad, 2020, p. 15). In other words, the framework invites teachers and students to embrace their cultures, lived experiences, and knowledge. When educators and their students validate their existence, they begin to gain a better understanding of who they are and their purpose in the world. Subsequently, we shift our focus and critically analyze how the book guides us to reimagine education and make sense of the injustices that plague our classrooms. We believe that building on the historical and critical frameworks discussed in this book will advance the work of educators toward achieving social justice in classrooms with children and youth of Color.

Dr. Muhammad's book consists of eight chapters, and at the end of each chapter, readers are given “questions for further consideration.” These questions bring value to this work, as they align with the content presented in each chapter and allow readers to critically reflect on what it means to be a HRL teacher and school leader. In Chapters 1 and 2, the author invites us to reimagine history literacy education as she introduces the HRL framework. Chapters 3–6 discuss each layer of the four-layered equity framework, namely, pursuing identity, skills, intellect, and criticality, respectively. The book ends in Chapters 7 and 8, in which the author bridges theory and practice and provides teachers with lesson plans and pedagogical approaches to implementing HRL and equity frameworks inside the classroom. The lesson plan template and sample lesson plans are from practicing teachers who transformed their rigid curricula into flexible lesson plans that are not just skills- and knowledge-oriented but are “more inclusive of identity, intellect, and criticality” (Muhammad, 2020, p. 159). The sample lesson plans provide teachers with guidance and, most importantly, with the hope that they can make small curriculum changes at a time using the HRL framework without having to revamp the entire state and district curricula that they are required to follow.

Through the lens of the historical literacy of Black societies, Dr. Muhammad (2020) argues that we can transform today's literacy learning and make it more equitable for students of Color by acknowledging the idea that “Literacy was connected to acts of self-empowerment, self-determination, and self-liberation” (p. 22). In making this comment, Dr. Muhammad urges readers to conceptualize literacy and use this to enact a change that shapes the sociopolitical landscape of a country built on various instances of social injustice and oppression (Lyiscott, 2019; Sealey-Ruiz, 2011). If used correctly and meaningfully, literacy can empower students to question societal inequities as well as challenge and enhance their sociopolitical consciousness. That is why in her book, Dr. Muhammad used the terms “skills” and “proficiencies” interchangeably to problematize the literacy instruction of skills alone without attending to content areas where students can demonstrate competence, ability, and expertise. She argues that when only skills are taught and then measured solely using quantitative high-stakes assessments, educators end up using “frameworks, curricula, and instructional tools that were not expressly designed for our students of color, the population who have been underserved the most” (Muhammad, 2020, p. 88).

Moreover, in focusing on using literacy to acknowledge and address the social injustices and other forms of oppression that hinder student learning, Dr. Muhammad recognizes the scholarship of her predecessor, Ladson-Billings (1995). We are reminded of the importance of having students of Color experience and achieve academic success and of giving them opportunities to develop their cultural competence and sociopolitical consciousness. The author builds upon Ladson-Billings’ three tenets of culturally relevant pedagogy. She does so by discussing how, during the Black literary societies of the 19th century, literacy was historically viewed “as the means of building reading and writing skills and knowledge, as well as the means to shape their identities and critical understandings of themselves, of communities, and of the world” (Muhammad, 2020, p. 32). In other words, Dr. Muhammad believes that through HRL, classroom teachers and school leaders can authentically acknowledge, embrace, respect, and cultivate the diverse cultural identities that students bring with them every day. When schools validate students’ identities, especially in the curriculum, both the teachers and their students can begin to critically analyze and be more responsive to the sociopolitical climates and periods in which we have historically lived and currently find ourselves living in.

In particular, Dr. Muhammad's four-layered equity framework demonstrates how we can redesign literacy instruction to develop students’ identity, intellect, critical thinking, and skills. Teachers, in particular, should help students understand their identities and see themselves as part of the curriculum. To do so, the author shares strategies and suggestions regarding texts, activities, lesson plans, and unit plans, which can be utilized to cultivate the identities representing the students’ authentic selves. Hence, this book offers teachers suggested approaches to redefining, selecting, and using texts to create culturally relevant and responsive classrooms in which students of Color see their present and future selves, as well as their distinct selves, interests, desires, and experiences.

For that reason, educators must think of how they can work with students of Color toward creating an environment in which intellectualism is deeply embedded in the classroom culture. Teachers can awaken their students’ interests and creative geniuses through the multiple teaching approaches suggested by Dr. Muhammad in this book, such as historicizing learning topics, conducting debates, connecting lesson plans to the human condition, and creating learning experiences that have “the power of doing.” These approaches enable teachers to develop criticality among their students and help them be more consciously aware, assume responsibility, understand power dynamics, and navigate through the systemic racism that they encounter. Such a sense of criticality, as Dr. Muhammad denotes, is closely connected to critical (Beck, 2005; Luke, 2000), racial (Guinier, 2004), and agitation literacies (Muhammad, 2019). Cultivating HRL practices creates culturally sustaining classrooms and helps students explore, honor, extend, and even problematize their cultural practices (Paris & Alim, 2014).

Dr. Muhammad provides teachers who are invested in implementing the four-layered equity pursuits of HRL with relevant sample texts and lesson plans. Through the use of specific texts, the author draws attention to the lack of diversity and representation of people of Color in the books and reference materials teachers use. She further argues that students become disconnected from texts in and out of schools, because “the texts are not responsive to students’ identities and histories and literacies” (Muhammad, 2020, p. 139). However, we feel that this book could have benefited from an additional chapter in which Dr. Muhammad shares her personal thoughts on how challenging it is for teachers who teach in urban school districts to bridge theory with practice. In other words, teachers who find themselves feeling hopeless and whose mind is bound by high-stakes assessment—“teaching towards the tests” mindset—could have benefited from a chapter in which Dr. Muhammad provides key tips and strategies on how to implement the HRL framework without feeling overwhelmed or afraid. Also, we believe that the HRL framework used in the book is mainly focused on Black history, and the lesson plans did not include examples from other minoritized students’ histories such as Latinx and immigrant communities. We also wish that there was a chapter dedicated to guiding teachers in diverse classrooms to modify their lesson plans according to their classroom cultures that are not only Black. So, we think that Dr. Muhammad should consider creating a second edition where she adds these missing additional chapters. Anyway, this book is still a great resource to all teachers who are committed to anti-racist teaching and willing to create inclusive classrooms where Black and Brown children and youth can thrive, regardless of their racial, ethnic, cultural, religious, and linguistic identities.

Cultivating Genius is Scholastic's top (and fastest) selling book (62,000 copies in 14 months) thus far. Moreover, Dr. Muhammad is the 2021 recipient of the National Council of Teachers of English, Outstanding Elementary Educator in the English Language Arts Award. For these—and many other reasons stated in this review—this book is a must-read for everyone in the field of education. Educators looking to acknowledge their students’ cultures, values, beliefs, identities, and lived experiences through literacy instruction should read this book. It is also an ideal reference for those who are looking for a guide to help them reimagine education and make sense of the sociopolitical injustices that plagues our public schools across the nation. Finally, those who believe that we have come a long way as a nation since Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka—we highly recommend that you read this book.

As Dr. Muhammad writes at the beginning, “This book was especially written to support those students for whom the educational system was not designed—namely, Black and Brown students. This is the group of students who are most consistently being underserved” (p. 12). Thus, we can no longer continue to believe in false promises and the ruling of Brown v. Board of Education. This is because, as long as we subscribe to such false notions, future generations of children, in general, and youth of Color, in particular, will continue to exist in their classrooms as marginalized, voiceless, and alienated human beings.