ORIGINAL SINS

American public schools have been called "the great equalizer." The thought being that if all children could just get an education, they would have the same opportunities later in life. But ORIGINAL SINS, makes it clear that the opposite is true: the educational system has played an instrumental role in creating racial hierarchies, preparing children to expect unequal treatment throughout their lives.

Multiple Fellowship and Award-winning author, including the MacDowell Fellow and Gordan Laing Award, Eve L Ewing demonstrates in this tour de force, ORIGINAL SINS, that American schools were designed to propagate the idea of white intellectual superiority, to "civilize" Native students and to prepare Black students for menial labor. Schools were not an afterthought for the "founding fathers"; they were envisioned by Thomas Jefferson to fortify the country's racial hierarchy. And while those dynamics are less overt now than they were in centuries past, Ewing shows that they persist in a curriculum that continues to minimize the horrors of American history. Ewing argues that the most insidious aspects of the system are under the radar: standardized testing, tracking, school discipline, and access to resources. American public schools have been called "the great equalizer." The thought being that if all children could just get an education, they would have the same opportunities later in life. But ORIGINAL SINS, makes it clear that the opposite is true: the educational system has played an instrumental role in creating racial hierarchies, preparing children to expect unequal treatment throughout their lives. Ewing makes the case that there should be a profound re-evaluation of what schools are supposed to do, and for whom. Eve L. Ewing is a writer, scholar, and cultural organizer from Chicago where she is an associate professor in the Department of Race, Diaspora, and Indigeneity at the University of Chicago. I recommend taking a look at the attached Q&A where Ewing's awards and accolades are listed. In addition to her many published books, Eve's poems and essays have been published in many venues, including The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Nation, Vanity Fair, The Washington Post, The New Republic, and Poetry Magazine. Eve is the author of the poetry collections Electric Arches and 1919, adapted into a hit play by Steppenwolf Theater, the nonfiction work Ghosts in the Schoolyard, and the novel for young readers, Maya and the Robot. She is also the co-author (with Nate Marshall) of the play No Blue Memories: The Life of Gwendolyn Brooks, produced by Manual Cinema, and co-wrote the short story "Timebox" with Janelle Monáe as part of the short story collection The Memory Librarian. She also cowrote the young adult graphic novel Change the Game with Colin Kaepernick, illustrated by Orlando Caicedo. She has written several projects for Marvel Comics, most notably the Ironheart series, and is currently writing Black Panther.