Wendy L. Luttrell

Urban educational research, practice, and policy is preoccupied with brokenness, stigma, and blame, leaving too many people unable to recognize the capacities, possibilities, and desires of marginalized children and youth. This project offers an alternative angle of vision, animated by young people’s own perspectives of growing up in working-poor and immigrant communities of color. The book draws upon longitudinal research which put cameras in the hands of the young people to document their lives and schooling over time (at ages 10, 12, 16, and 18). The core theme of the book is the invisible and unacknowledged work that the children do to secure their education, compose their identities, and exercise their moral thinking about care and caring. Analysis of their visual narratives has far-reaching implications for re-thinking constructions of working-class childhood and reimagining educational policies and practices.