Trust Kids!: Stories on Youth Autonomy and Confronting Adult Supremacy

by carla bergman, Matt Hern (Foreword by), Dani Burlison

Overview

Trust Kids! weaves together essays, interviews, poems, and artwork from scholars, activists, and artists about our relationships with children in all areas of our lives.

The contributors of Trust Kids! write from different backgrounds, genders, ages, and sexualities and combine past lineages with more recent child-rearing ideas to offer a fresh, inspiring perspective. Many works on parenting and families wind up re-inscribing hierarchies by declaring how kids should be liberated. Trust Kids! insists on youth autonomy, listening to youth, and questioning adult supremacy on every page. At the heart of the book are conversations about all the ways that children can be included, loved, and cared for in more generative, just, and egalitarian ways. Its essays explore the liberatory potential of consent and autonomy in relationships among children, youth, and the adults in their lives. They also trace how oppressive attitudes toward children, far from being “natural” forms of kinship with the youngest members of our families and communities, have identifiable social and historical roots.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781849353861
Publisher:	AK Press
Publication date:	11/01/2022
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	4 MB

About the Author

carla joy bergman is an independent scholar, writer, podcaster, and mom. She has spent the past two decades working in her community to create collaborative multi-media platforms that range from print to films. carla loves to zoom in on the in-between happenings and issues and to bust binaries. She is the co-author of Joyful Militancy (AK Press, 2017) and co-founder of Grounded Futures, and is continuing to write on a variety of subjects. She lives in Vancouver, Canada.

Matt Hern lives and works in east Vancouver, where he founded the Purple Thistle Center and Car-Free Vancouver Day. A former sportswriter and a radical urbanist whose writing has been published on six continents and in ten languages, he is the author of Big Moves (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2020) and Common Ground in a Liquid City (AK Press, 2010), which was shortlisted for the Vancouver Book Award.
Dani Burlison (she/her) is the creator/editor of All of Me: Stories of Love, Anger and the Female Body, and the author of Some Places Worth Leaving. She has been a staff writer at a Bay Area alt-weekly and a regular contributor at Yes! Magazine, Chicago Tribune, KQED, and elsewhere. Her journalism, fiction, and personal essays can also be found at Ms. Magazine, Earth Island Journal, The Rumpus, Portland Review, Hip Mama Magazine, and in various anthologies and zines. Dani teaches and lives on unceded Southern Pomo land in California.

Table of Contents

Foreword, By Matt Hern
Acknowledgments
Introduction, By carla joy bergman
New Thorns: A Weaving Poem in 4 Stanzas, By Curiousism Cyphers 
Stanza #1: Rooting for Love, By Curiousism Cyphers
1. Out and Open: By Noleca Radway
2. “A Little More Rainbow: A Conversation About One Transgender Experience,” By Dani Burlison and Enfys Craft
3. Hold on to your Child (within), By Uilliam Joy Bergman
4. Intuiting Autonomy: An interview with Yasamin­­­­­ and Tim Holland, by carla joy bergman and chris time steele
5. Anarchy Begins At Home, By Idzie Desmarais
6. Already in My Bones, Written by my ancestors, me, and my kin.
Stanza #2: Solidarities of Resistance by Curiousism Cyphers
7. The Power Of Unschooling: Why My Daughters Don't Go To School, By Akilah Richards 
8. Take Back Your Kids, By Meghan Carrico 
9. Changing the Context, By Antonio Buehler
10. Listen To Children, By Sara Zacuto (courtesy of Little Owl School)
11. Abolish Highschool, By Rebecca Solnit
12. A Fatigue Wearing Judas: Acknowledging Histories and Breaking Cycles, By chris time steele
Stanza #3, Stardreaming,  By Curiousism Cyphers
13. He korero, By Jon Pawson (Ngāti Porou/Pākehā)
14. On the Last Leg of the Journey: An Interview with Helen Hughes, By carla bergman
15. Creating a Web of Intergenerational Trust, By Maya Motoi, in conversation with Wakaba and Joanna Motoi (Japan, 2021)
16. Four Qs + a Poem with Cindy White and Kitty Sipple (with tech support by Dawn White)
17. On Being a Trusted Adult: A conversation between Chris Mercogliano and Lily Mercogliano Easton 
18. Solidarity Begins at Home, or A Landing Pad Without Borders, By carla joy bergman
Stanza #4: Listen...Adults! By Curiousism Cyphers
19. The Children of Children: Why the Adultification Thesis is a Misguided Trap for Black Children and Families, By Stacey Patton
20. Childing The World, By Toby Rollo, PhD
21. “Blah blah blah” No Longer: Learning to Host, Celebrate and Follow a New Generation, By Gustavo Esteva, Madhu
S. Prakash, and Dana L. Stuchul
22. Fire of Ata: The Raging Voice is a Song of Love, By Gabriel Zacuto
23. Magneto's Dreams: A New Symbol for Youth Autonomy, By carla joy bergman and Zach Bergman
Back to the Beginning (Outro)
24. Youth Ellipsis: An ode to echolalia, By Kitty Sipple
Notes
Contributors Bios

Contributors Places of Residence
Matt Hern (Vancouver, BC)
carla joy bergman (Vancouver, BC)
Noleca Radway (Amsterdam)
Dani Burlson (Sonoma County, CA)
Liam Joy Bergman (Vancouver, BC)
Chris Time Steele (Denver, CO)
Idzie Desmarais (Montreal, Quebec)
Akilah Richards (Portland, OR)
Meghan Carrico (Vancouver, BC)
Antonio Buehler (Austin, TX)
Sara Zacuto (Orange, CA)
Rebecca Solnit (San Francisco, CA)
Jon Pawson (New Zealand)
Maya Motoi (JKyoto, Japan)
Cindy White (Minneapolis, Minnesota)
Kitty Sipple (Minneapolis, Minnesota)
Chris Mercogliano (Albany, NY)
Lily Mercogliano (Albany, NY)
Stacey Patton (Washington, DC)
Toby Rollo (Thunder Bay, Ontario)
Gustavo Esteva (Oaxaca, Mexico)
Madhu S. Prakash (Penn State University)
Dana L. Stuchul (Penn State University)
Gabriel Zacuto (Orange California)
Zach Bergman (Vancouver, BC)

Editorial Reviews

"Trust Kids! is wild and playful and challenging and engaging. Like those playground conversations with other parents. Like stories children tell around kitchen tables. Like the exhilarating possibility that the future is, in fact, in good hands if we just trust kids."
—Tomas Moniz, author of Big Familia 

"Trust Kids! is based on the radical premise that 'solidarity begins at home.' Recognizing that we reproduce the seeds of hierarchy in our everyday relationships, this horizon-expanding book not only offers guidance for youth liberation and intergenerational justice but also prefigures an alternative to adult supremacy. Drawing on and interweaving voices across generations, this collection of essays, interviews, poems, and art centers young folks' perspectives and wisdom. Rather than prescribing a blueprint for revolution, the authors present a diversity of creative approaches to how adults can learn to trust kids more deeply and immediately co-create our futures together."
—Eli Meyerhoff, author of Beyond Education: Radical Studying for Another World

From the Publisher