August 3, 2005
Weis, Lois and Michelle Fine, eds. Beyond Silenced Voices: Class, Race, and Gender in United States Schools. New York: State University of New York Press, 1993.
Beyond Silenced Voices is a compilation of articles focusing on institutionalized silencing in public schools. Divided into two parts, Weis and Fine’s collection begins with a series of studies that analyze the ways marginalized voices are systematically silenced according to race, gender, and class affiliations. These pieces are each concerned with the ways certain voices are silenced by both implicit and explicit institutional structures imbedded in the public school system, as well as the way in which these silences are sustained and naturalized by the institution. In the second part of the book, writers attempt to listen to these institutionally silenced voices by incorporating individual testimonials into the articles. It is only by hearing and centering these “once marginalized” voices, Fine and Weis argue in their Introduction, that we can move “‘beyond silenced voices’” and “understand and interrupt the perversions and pleasures of power, privilege, and marginalization in public schooling” (2). (Read the article)