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Public Education and the Imagination-Intellect argues for re-thinking the thinking process and for urban education reform. Weems's work lives in the moment of creation. Her imagination-intellect theory chapters frame this book; she posits that the imagination and intellect are inextricably linked; that like Freire's architect all ideas are first imagined, then intellectually developed in an interconnected process that mirrors the blood's circulation through the body. The two plays and the collection of poems are rich, layered landscapes of African American culture and meanings. They lend themselves to multi-interpretation, co-performance, and co-ownership by each audience member who engages the work.
About the author
The Author: Mary E. Weems is an educator, a performer, a poet, a dramatist, and a theorist of the imagination-intellect. She currently teaches English composition and creative writing at Cleveland State University. Her publications include: three short collections of poetry, White, Blackeyed, and Fembles; an article, «I Speak from the Wound in My Mouth: From Catalyst to Creation to Conference Presentation» in Futures of Education; two performance texts, «My Tuesdays with Morrie» in Cultural Studies: Critical Methodologies and «The Universe is a One-Line Poem» in Studies in Symbolic Interaction; and a book review, «Mercurochrome» in Xcp Cultural Poetics.
Report
«Mary E. Weems' 'Public Education and the Imagination-Intellect: I Speak from the Wound in My Mouth' is a critical and creative tour de force. It is a rich, multilayered text. Combining multiple genres of writing and multiple points of departure, this book takes us to places of personal experience and critical insight where educators have never gone before. It is as much an urban artist's testimonial as it is the most radical demolition of the kind of disciplinary confinement and knowledge insulation that now mars educational research and thinking. Not since Baldwin in 'Fire Next Time' has a public intellectual spoken so forcefully about the contradictions of experience and existence in urban life and the educational and cultural lessons that we have chosen to ignore.»
(Cameron McCarthy, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign)
