Abstract
Like most African American women, I can remember being a young girl and making the biweekly trip to the hair salon with my mother and sisters. I can recall listening to the women engage in what my mother called grown-folk conversations, and these conversations focused on various issues within our community, including education because my mother was an assistant principal at the time. Reflecting on my experiences visiting the hair salon as a youth and also as an adult, I argue the African American hair salon—what Majors considers a “black public space” (p. 13)—perhaps is an exotic and eccentric informal space for teaching and learning. Significantly, there is an unique linguistic and cultural experience that occurs among African American women at the hair salon. For this reason, the author recognizes that the African American hair salon is a site for ethnographic exploration of race, gender, social interactions, and discourse. According to Majors, Shoptalk is defined as “a kind of conversational discourse, socializes individuals into routine problem-solving strategies to navigate the complex world” (p. 13). This book captured the discourse that occurred among African American women at a hair salon and how to transfer that knowledge in the efforts to enhance the instruction of Black students in urban classrooms. To that end, Majors is applauded because this volume (1) extends the scholarly genealogy of culturally relevant teaching and (2) moves beyond the critical analysis of the informal learning that occurs within this Black public space as it “confronts assumptions regarding the limitations of everyday discourses in pursuit of academic knowledge” (p. 21).
Within the beginning pages of the text, Majors eloquently, yet unapologetically, acknowledges her positionality, and she illuminates the racial divide that continues to grow between White teachers and Black students in the urban classroom. Specifically, “Shoptalk resists public discourses of sameness and conformity, and addresses issues of identity that impact teaching and learning with regard to cultural-minority-group members, in particular, and African Americans specifically” (p. 19). On first glance, ShopTalk may appear most appropriate for K-12 educational settings. However, Majors is commended for her intentionality of thoroughly explaining each component of the framework such that it is most applicable in a variety of educational contexts. Majors’s book is a scholarly exposé that explains the significance of using Shoptalk as transformative-equity-based framework in the classroom and offers a blueprint of how to enact Shoptalk. It is important to realize that while the terms adult education and adult learner are absent from the book, this framework is most appropriate for adult educational settings. For example, Major’s transformative-equity-based framework has three major components that resonate to me as an adult educator. First, it places emphasis on critical self-reflection by the teacher and learner. Second, it examines issues from the multiple perspectives among the learners. Third, the teacher confronts her or his own cultural space and privilege.
The scholarly rigor of ShopTalk is the greatest strength of the book. The author clearly demonstrated her exceptional attention to the aim of a qualitative inquiry and executed research that is innovative, fresh, and extremely timely. One of the scholarly highlights is how the author diligently explained her conceptual framework and provided a sophisticated graphic—inspired by the Chicago Transit Authorities train lines—to metaphorically express her conceptualization of Shoptalk. In addition, Majors expounded on individual components of Shoptalk and each “line” was represented as a chapter. This made the text very organized and enriched the flow of the book. At the same time, this rigor highlights a weakness in that this book is for limited audiences within the ivory tower. There are nonformal and informal educational spaces wherein linguistically nonacademicians may experience difficulty in comprehending Shoptalk, yet this framework is most appropriate for the teaching adults within these educational spaces (i.e., volunteer instructors within literacy and ABE programs who have never attended college, educational spaces for older adult learners, etc.). It would be great if the author could develop an abridged version that remained scholarly, yet comprehendible, for adult educators that extend beyond formal adult higher education settings.
In the final analysis, I would strongly recommend ShopTalk to adult educators who seek to improve their skills of facilitation by providing more culturally relevant learning opportunities for adult learners. Although Majors’s work was situated in an urban setting, I believe her framework offers insight on research and practice that affect teaching and learning with regard to cultural-minority-group adult learners.