Donna E. Alvermann

I'm not done with this book yet, but I could not continue on without writing my feelings about a particularly horrible chapter: "4 Colored Girls Who Considered Suicide/When Social Networking Was Enuf." I can't remember the last time I read something so horrifically insulting, sexist, racist, and demeaning. The author, Davie E. Kirkland, in an effort to better understand his mother's poetical musings about her depression, suicidal ideations, and prostitution, took it upon himself to study "Black female literacy artifacts" online. First of all, he offers nothing unique from the perspective of either blacks or females to justify such a narrow scope, and second-of-all, the body of his research encompasses two writers (Maya) and one unnamed "writer" who made a YouTube video about a black girl who met up with a man on MySpace and was subsequently raped and murdered. I know literacy-based research usually has less subjects than scientific or medical research, but that's a bit ridiculous.

Kirkland paints his story as though only black women are capable of expressing emotions online or are capable of having less than ideal existences: "Such artifacts have cracks in them and ruptures that my masculine mind, by itself, could not quite understand, a fragility that my hardened hands alone were not fit to handle." Apparently black women are so fragile and weak that a big strong man couldn't possibly understand or empathize.

At a later point in the chapter, Kirkland is observing Maya as she browses a boy's profile online, looking at his pictures. "I began to wonder: if she was looking at boys online, then certainly some boy was looking at her too. And if the boys are looking at girls...I began to worry!" What the hell year is this? How DARE those boys look at girls! We must put our girls in full burkas so that they may never be gazed upon. What a sexist douche. It gets better though.

He later confirms his fear that the boys are indeed looking at girls, and horror of horror, they are RATING them. God no...not that! He says of this "I paused, noticing the stitch of untutored masculinity in the room, which in years would become full grown adult perversion...Such bodies were and continue to be auctioned off by prying eye and, in this case, limited even more by an ungainly ratings system that results from stunted maturity." First off..."stunted maturity" - I believe we call that "teenager" (which is what he was observing). Second of all, the first part of that quote implies that no boy is capable of growing into a respectful young man if he ever took the time to rate girls as a teenager. Congrats men! Apparently you are ALL "full grown adult perver(ts)" according to Kirkland.

I'm sorry, but this is some of the worst s*** I've ever read. Kirkland is derogatory to his subjects in an attempt to empower them. He offers no unique view as to how either women or blacks (much less black women) are using online literacies to share/cope with/overcome their unique struggles; instead, he talks about the same crap nearly EVERYONE goes through. This...I can't even...

Aside from this chapter, the others are written in overly academic voices making them stifling to get through. They offer few unique perspectives and some of the ideas are completely laughable (using Webkinz world to teach online literacies? Really?). Also, despite being published in 2010, most of the articles so far talk ad nauseum about MySpace. Nothing published after 2007 should ever even mention MySpace...… (altro)