Will My Name Be Shouted Out

My Name Be Shouted Out?: Reaching Inner-City Students Through the Power of Writing, by Stephen O'Connor. New York: Touchstone Books, 1996. 382 pp. $14.00, paper. Reviewed by Deloris M. Saunders, University of Maryland-Baltimore County. My Name Be Shouted Out? presents a journalistic account of author Stephen O'Connor's experiences teaching creative writing in a New York City junior high school under the auspices of the Teachers and Writers Collaborative. The Collaborative has sponsored residencies by visiting writers and other artists in New York City schools since 1967. O'Connor produced this work to provide insights into the crisis in urban public schools that serve predominantly low-income children from racial/ethnic minority groups. He wanted to illustrate the plight of these students and the cynical, unabashed destruction of federal programs that benefit the poor and working classes. The book is divided into three major sections comprising 16 chapters. Part one, Innocence and Guilt, describes O'Connor's engagement as a writer in residence through the Collaborative. Part two, On This Day a Poor Boy Died, discusses his pedagogy and methods of engaging his students in writing. Part three, Will My Name Be Shouted Out?, describes his second year of teaching writing. Part three closes with an analysis of his feelings about his students and the draconian shift in . . . social spending policies in America (p. 377), along with a narrative on the ills of American policy affecting the poor. Working without the benefit of pedagogical acumen, O'Connor attempted to engage junior high school students in expressing themselves through creative writing. Because his position was funded outside of the regular curriculum, he was able to use unconventional pedagogy, curriculum content, and standards. His interest soon shifted to creating a play that the students would present. He chose as the topic of this play the 1989 murder of Yusuf Hawkins, a young Black man who was killed in a racially motivated attack by more than a dozen White youths upon visiting New York City's Bensonhurst neighborhood to look at a used car. The incident became the center of racial crisis in a city already filled with racial tension caused by previous acts of violence. O'Connor states that he believed that the violence of the incident and the attendant publicity would motivate his students to write freely of their feelings about the event. He wanted his students to understand the feelings of both perpetrators and victims, hoping this would inspire them to be more compassionate. He also believed that their writings would lead to a deeper understanding about the effects of violence. Thus, he encouraged his students to write monologues, dialogues, and poetry about Bensonhurst or other violence they had witnessed

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