14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fast-paced, Fascinating and Riveting Look at Debate, Education, Race and Class, October 20, 2006
This review is from: Cross-X: The Amazing True Story of How the Most Unlikely Team from the Most Unlikely of Places Overcame Staggering Obstacles at Home and at School to ... Community on Race, Power, and Education (Hardcover)
Journalist Joe Miller takes readers deep inside the world of high school debate in his first book, Cross-X, recounting the 2002-2003 school year he spent with several members of the Kansas City, Missouri Central High School squad. But rather than focus on the mechanics of the debate world (though there's plenty of bureaucratic politics and minute rule-making and breaking here), this is a story about race, desegregation, class, education, power, and hope. He takes readers inside the lives of coach Jane Rinehart and the stars of her team, Ebony Rose, Antoine Lewis, Brandon Dial, and Marcus Leach. By the end, Miller's given us Foucault, poverty, a shooting, the high of winning and the despair of losing. Also college recruiters, internal debate sniping, crying during rounds, rap music, and travel around the world.
Miller doesn't just dryly observe what he's seeing; from the first page, it's clear that he cares deeply about the topic he's covering and the racial divides in Kansas City, situating himself, a white journalist, in one of the "stylish nooks that make cities bearable for people like me." He contrasts his neighborhood with the boarded-up houses and general disrepair he sees on the mostly black side of town, but the inequalities come into full focus when he talks about Central High School, the attempts to revitalize it, and their abysmal failure. His history of both Central and the effects of desegregation are one of the most fascinating parts of the book--part legal history and part shameful discrepancies in educational funding.
Yet he contrasts these stories with the actual emotions, dreams, ambitions and lives of the students he's covering, quoting them extensively and giving a real feel for what they see as the possibilities of their worlds. It's through their eyes that readers see the power debate has not just to win them trophies or travel, but to interact with people they never would have met otherwise, to perhaps get scholarships to college, to expand their minds and their horizons. Debate becomes a way of life for them, shaping their actual days but also reconstructing how they see the world. Toward the end of the book, Miller explores the ways the various Central debaters use their life experiences to further the terms of debate discussions, taking theory about race, education, and class and presenting it on a very personal level, playing rap songs and sharing with often highly privileged schools the reality of their daily lives.
Miller is clearly rooting for Central, but that doesn't stop him from relaying the debaters at their best, and their worst. He doesn't pass judgment, though does point out the preferential treatment the male teammates receive, and the volatile, tumultuous relationship they have with their coach, along with her goals for the team and strict rules for them (no cursing, for one). Miller makes this 478-page book a fast read, in a style that gets into the hearts and minds of his subjects through traveling with and befriending them far past the point of objectivity, which he also chronicles. A fascinating look at debate for former and current nerds, or those just looking for a great, true story relevant to anyone who cares about the future of education in this country, race, teenagers, class, and the power of argument.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Powerful tale of the fight to succeed despite racism, February 2, 2007
This review is from: Cross-X: The Amazing True Story of How the Most Unlikely Team from the Most Unlikely of Places Overcame Staggering Obstacles at Home and at School to ... Community on Race, Power, and Education (Hardcover)
Cross-X by Joe Miller covers about a year in the lives of several students from Central High School in Kansas City, Missouri as they travel on the debate team. They face racism, infighting from the state activities board, and the choices made by their own family. Miller does an amazing job taking this story and making it accessible to all readers. The stories of Ebony, Marcus, Antoine, and Brandon are poignant stories of survival. These black teenagers compete against white kids from private schools and win because of their quick wit and determination to win. Miller completely changed my ideas about debate: what it is and what it stands for. He includes a history of Central High School, a flashpoint in the controversy over Brown vs. Board of Education and also the site of an astronomically expensive renovation to encourage white families to move to the district. Instead these teens have to face ambivalent teachers, tough home lives, and peer pressure in an environment that expects them to fail. The story ultimately becomes about racism and the right to be different. The only disappointment in the book is when Miller inserts himself into the story by becoming a coach to two of the boys. As an objective observer, Miller was able to narrate a tale showing all of the different sides to these young men. As an active participant, he becomes strident as he attempts to be their savior. As such, the ending is a bit of a let-down. The book exposes the deep differences between black and white education and points out that we need to make a change so that all children have the same opportunities for education so they can succeed. It opened my eyes to the incipient racism in schools today.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Strongly recommended for debaters, teachers, and teenagers, January 28, 2007
This review is from: Cross-X: The Amazing True Story of How the Most Unlikely Team from the Most Unlikely of Places Overcame Staggering Obstacles at Home and at School to ... Community on Race, Power, and Education (Hardcover)
I think that Cross-X may be one of the best non-academic education-related books that I have ever read. I want to recommend it to everyone. The book's got a lot of things that make it great: nailbiting suspense (during the descriptions of intense debate competitions), depressing history (about farcical desegregation efforts in Kansas City), highly detailed character portraits (when delving into the histories and quirks of the main characters and their families), musings on journalist ethics (when the author Joe Miller [no relation, by the way] realizes that he's becoming personally involved in the story) and reflections on the nature of racism (throughout the entire book).
As a debate teacher, many of the details about inner-city schools, their students, and the students' parents rang true to me -- and Joe Miller's self-critiques about his perceptions of the debaters and their backgrounds also rang true.
This book is so fascinating that I carried it with me everywhere so I could keep reading and find out what happens next. Usually when I do that with books, they're well-written works of fiction with detailed characters and amazing plot twists; the real-life story that Joe Miller tells is every bit as captivating as the best fiction.
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