"Dream Not of Other Worlds" is a memoir about my experiences teaching in a "Negro" school during the waning days of the Jim Crow south. In it, I seek to capture the immediacy and drama of my fourth-grade classroom in 1970 while reflecting on the long history of legally-sanctioned segregated education in the rural Virginia county where I taught. The first white teacher my students had ever had, I tell how my cultural assumptions, as well as theirs, were challenged, unsettled, and transformed by our mutual encounter in the classroom. Resisting the triumphant narrative of the conventional teaching memoir, I use my experience to address the sociological reality of overcrowded classrooms, empty book shelves, hungry children, harsh corporal punishments, and widespread literacy in many of the nation's impoverished schools. My book ends with my return to my former school in 2004 where I attempt to discover what has -- and what has not -- changed after more than thirty years of integration.
Literary awards received and date received.
Obermann Center for Advanced Studies Selection
"Outstanding Academic Book of 1998," Choice Magazine
Book Types:
Nonfiction
Audience Types:
Adult
Genres (Optional):
Memoir,
History
Are you willing to do programs for schools, libraries, or other groups?
Yes
If you are willing to do programs, will you charge a fee?
No
Diehl, Huston
Dream Not of Other Worlds: Teaching in a Segregated Elementary School, 1970,
University of Iowa Press,
Iowa City, IA,
2007