Black Lives Matter in U.S Schools, edited by Boni Wozolek (2022), brings together present-day thinkers and curriculum theorizers, including Walter Gershon, Roland Mitchell, Denise Taliaferro Baszile and Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz, to make meaning of the Movement for Black Lives in the polyvocal curricula of U.S. schools from K-12 through higher education. Leaning on the works of Carter G. Woodson, W.E.B. Du Bois, Pauli Murray, Sylvia Wynter, Marimba, and other Black scholars, the authors offer many examples of the historical and current ways Black life does not (yet) matter in U.S. schools, but they also acknowledge, through an afro-realist lens, that Black lives have always mattered to Black people. The essays in Black Lives Matter in U.S. Schools weave together to create a curriculum of refusal that confronts the neoliberal paradox in academia. Museus and Wang (2022) offer an apt framework for this review, posing that research seeking to refuse neoliberal logics needs to attend to issues of reflexivity, responsibility, and relationships. This review considers Black Lives Matter in U.S. Schools through this framework.
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