jennifer's Reviews > Disillusioned: Five Families and the Unraveling of America's Suburbs

This is a truly remarkable book, and research project. History, ethnography, philosophy, psychology, etiology — it sweeps from large scale patterns to the intimate scale of individual lives and hopes, and the entanglements between them. A wild ride.

Highlights:

* Within a couple pages I was already tearing up at the sweetness and care of some of the families and educators

* As I got deeper, it was clear what a special document it was

* On page 359 I decided Ben Herold might be the only white person in America who actually took 2020 seriously

* When I hit page 403 and hyperobjects I was flooded with that incredible feeling you get when someone is talking about something that shapes so much but is never explained or acknowledged. It makes you feel so much less crazy

* Cried at the ending passage

* Loved the beautiful epilogue — she should have a cover credit for it in the reprint 🙏

* Teared up again at the love letter to Philly in the notes, a prose poem that I hope no one from here misses

I was particularly grateful to read this just after finishing The Roots of Educational Inequality” by Erika Kitzmiller, a powerful book that looked at many related issues through the lens of one now-closed city school. That one sent me spiraling into hopelessness, to see so starkly how the promise of public education has never, ever been realized or evenly accessible to children across races and ethnicities.

The problems are no less daunting here, but the human stories at the book’s heart ground us in why it matters so much to keep trying to build schools and a system of public education that supports every child so they can develop as full, vibrant people who have the lives they and their parents dream of for them and help knit this broken society back together. And for those of us involved in that work, it was valuable to see different strategies and approaches (as well as moments of opportunity, obstacles, limits and consequences that can shape the arc of progress) of those trying to lead or improve our schools as they play out over time.

[And if anyone who sees this wants to get plugged in to education justice advocacy, send a note ❤️]