Toward a Live(d) Black World for Black Children
A Review of Amari Johnson’s Under a Black Star: The Maroon Impulse in New Orleans
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.18357/jcs511202622659Keywords:
Black children, Black geographies, desire-based pedagogy, Indigenous sovereignty, marronageAbstract
This review of Amari Johnson’s Under a Black Star examines his autoethnographic account of the BlackStar community in New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Johnson reframes marronage away from overdetermined focus on escape and instead as pursuit of freedom, a process of disengagement, flight, and reengagement. I analyze the central concepts in the book and how they articulate a desire-based pedagogy. Following Johnson’s lead, I situate this work within Black geographies to think through how these practices create safety and possibility for Black children while also raising critical questions about making a live(d) Black world on Indigenous lands.
Downloads
References
Bajaj, M. (2022). Decolonial approaches to school curriculum for Black, Indigenous, and other students of colour. London Review of Education, 20(1), 1–14. https://doi.org/10.14324/LRE.20.1.05 DOI: https://doi.org/10.14324/LRE.20.1.05
Bang, M., Curley, L., Kessel, A., Marin, A., Suzukovich, E. S., III , & Strack, G. (2014). Muskrat theories, tobacco in the streets, and living Chicago as Indigenous land. Environmental Education Research, 20(1), 37–55. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504622.2013.865113 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/13504622.2013.865113
Coles, J. A. (2023). Black desire: Black-centric youthtopias as critical race educational praxis. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 36(6), 981-1002. https://doi.org/10.1080/09518398.2021.1888163 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/09518398.2021.1888163
Essien, I. (2019). Pathologizing culture in early childhood education: Illuminating microaggressions from the narratives of the parents of Black children. The Western Journal of Black Studies, 43(1/2), 9–21.
Ferdinand, M. (2022). Behind the colonial silence of wilderness: “In marronage lies the search of a world.” Environmental Humanities, 14(1), 182–201. https://doi.org/10.1215/22011919-9481506 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1215/22011919-9481506
Johnson, A. (2025). Under a black star: The maroon impulse in New Orleans. University of Minnesota Press.
McKittrick, K. (2011). On plantations, prisons, and a Black sense of place. Social and Cultural Geography, 12(8), 947–963. https://doi.org/10.1080/14649365.2011.624280 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/14649365.2011.624280
McKittrick, K., & Woods, C. A. (Eds.). (2007). Black geographies and the politics of place. Between the Lines.
Tuck, E. (2009). Suspending damage: A letter to communities. Harvard Educational Review, 79(3), 409–427. https://doi.org/10.17763/haer.79.3.n0016675661t3n15 DOI: https://doi.org/10.17763/haer.79.3.n0016675661t3n15
Winston, C. (2021). Maroon geographies. Annals of the American Association of Geographies, 111(7), 2185–2199. https://doi.org/10.1080/24694452.2021.1894087 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/24694452.2021.1894087
Wright, W. J. (2020). The morphology of marronage. Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 110(4), 1134–1149. https://doi.org/10.1080/24694452.2019.1664890 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/24694452.2019.1664890
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2026 John Pierre
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Authors contributing to the Journal of Childhood Studies agree to release their articles under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 International license. This licence allows anyone to share their work (copy, distribute, transmit) and to adapt it for non-commercial purposes provided that appropriate attribution is given, and that in the event of reuse or distribution, the terms of this license are made clear.
Authors retain copyright of their work and grant the journal right of first publication.
Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
