Young, James and Itihari Toure, Eds.: Asa: Honoring His Life and Work
Young, James and Itihari Toure, eds. Asa: Honoring His Life and Work. Chicago, IL: African American Images, 2013. ISBN: 978-1934-155-844, pbk, bib, pp.154. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] A collection of essays by Itihari Toure (Clark Atlanta University; The Jenga Collective), Chike Akua (Georgia State University), Mark A. Lomax (First African Presbyterian Church, Lithonia, Georgia), Charlyn Harper Browne (Center for the Study of Social Policy, Washington, D.C.), Ernest D. Washington (University of Massachusetts, Amherst), James C. Young (Clark Atlanta University), and Sarita K. Davis (Georgia State University, Atlanta) in honor of the life and work of teacher, historian and psychologist Asa G. Hilliard (Nana Baffour Amankwatia, II), Ed.D. Hilliard (1933-2007) served as an endowed professor of Urban Education at Georgia State University in Atlanta for twenty-seven years, led numerous study tours to Egypt and Ghana for over thirty years, authored several books and hundreds of articles, and was a founding member of the National Black Child Development Institute and (first vice-president) the Association for the Study of Classical African Civilizations. The book is organized around issues facing the survival of the African (p.iv) throughout the world, and thus, it is designed to engage critical thinking and inquiry formulated on a paradigm of reawakening the African mind through re-socialization, infusion, mastery and the dissemination of a transformative African-centered education (pp.3-4). In chapter one, Toure frames the discourse to suggest that educational excellence was the mission of Hilliard's work, hence an Asafication of excellence that would 'locate African people' in the context of cultural excellence wherein the production of excellence would be the norm and building for eternity an expected goal (pp.1-2). Next, in chapter two, Toure discusses restoring excellence in African education, renewing a process of social transformation, specific models of communal healing excellence, and spiritually driven and conceptualized collective experiences personified in the Jegna Collective community developed transformation process. Chike Akua via a series of letters from his former students outlines that education has been a cultural thread in the African American community that reflects the ancient African philosophy of education and he ends with a definition of African-centered education in chapter three. Mark A. Lomax discusses Christian spirituality in the context of leadership in the church in North America in a rambling way to suggest that self-hate and self-deprecation is retarding the African American community; Charlyn Harper Browne in a genetic manner details the importance of preparing early childhood educators and states that perhaps the most important lesson she learned from Hilliard was to never stop questioning, reading, reflecting [and] searching for meaning, and learning in chapter five (p. …