Urban Narratives foregrounds previously silenced voices of young people of color who are labeled disabled. Overrepresented in special education classes, yet underrepresented in educational research, these students ¿ the largest group within segregated special education classes ¿ share their perceptions of the world and their place within it. Eight ¿portraits in progress¿ consisting of their own words and framed by their poetry and drawings, reveal compelling insights about life inside and out of the American urban education system. The book uses an intersectional analysis to examine how power circulates in society throughout and among historical, cultural, institutional, and interpersonal domains, impacting social, academic, and economic opportunities for individuals, and expanding or circumscribing their worlds.

The Author: David J. Connor is Associate Professor at Hunter College, City University of New York. He is the co-author of Reading Resistance: Discourses of Exclusion in Desegregation and Inclusion Debates (Peter Lang, 2006), and his articles have been featured in a wide variety of journals. He has won several awards, including the Teachers College President¿s Grant for Student Research in Diversity; the 2005 Outstanding Junior Scholar Award in Disability Studies in Education; and the 2006 Emerging Scholar in Disability Studies in Education awarded by the DSE/Special Interest Group of the American Education Research Association.