Luttrell, Wendy. (2003). Pregnant Bodies, Fertile Minds: Gender, Race, and the Schooling of Pregnant Teens. New York: Routledge
Pp. xviii + 238
$23.95 ISBN 0-415-93189-4
Reviewed by Donna Adair Breault
Illinois State University
January 25, 2004
It is always exciting to find a book that stands out as an exemplar within its field – whether that field is research methodology, feminist theory, critical theory, or the like. When, however, you find a book that achieves this distinction within multiple contexts – one that offers vital images and challenges to multiple audiences, you realize you have an incredible resource that you will want to share with others. Luttrell’s Pregnant Bodies, Fertile Minds, is such a book.
Confessions
Upon first glance at this book, I must admit that my reaction was something to the effect, “O.K., it looks like it will be interesting, but hardly relevant to what I do as a curriculum professor and teacher educator.” Needless to say, perhaps, I stand corrected. Within the first few pages I was intrigued by the story of these young women – girls who were participating in the Piedmont Program for Pregnant Teens (PPPT). I was also surprised by the manner in which I was able to experience their worlds – an honest examination where Luttrell offers their experiences and their self-representations in such a way that she is able to defer to their voices even though she was an active part of their education during the five years in which she engaged in this person-centered ethnography.
Artistic Balance
According to Luttrell, the book is written in such as way as to “consider what we can learn from a single school program in a particular time and place, about the layers of social and psychological factors at work in the education and/or miseducation or pregnant teenagers” (p. xvii). I believe she accomplishes this in powerful ways – mindfully negotiating their voices with her own responses, thoughtfully reflecting upon the theory that informs her analysis, and honestly dealing with the challenges of ethnographic inquiry.
Because of her thoughtful negotiations, I believe Luttrell escapes a common pitfall. She does not over-theorize. She introduces theoretical notions that bring more fullness and clarity to the experiences without using the girls’ experiences as a platform to proselytize about gender and race. The experiences speak for themselves in many instances, and as such, they would inform both undergraduate and graduate students as well as practicing teachers and administrators in more powerful ways than some books on race and gender that focus more on the theory itself. While abstraction and theory play vital roles in academia, when rooted first and foremost in experience as Luttrell has done, they become truly educative. As Dewey (1980) notes,
Tangled scenes of life are made more intelligible in esthetic experience; not, however, as reflection and science render things more intelligible by reduction to conceptual form, but by presenting their meanings as the matter of clarified, coherent and intensified or “impassioned” experience. (p. 290)
Thus, Luttrell achieves a level of artistry within her inquiry. She becomes more than merely a “curator” or the girls’ representations (p. xvii). She also becomes a curator to a number of very important ideas from which the reader may reflect. This is not to say that the books that do make stronger statements about race and gender are not of equal value – they merely serve a different purpose. Luttrell recognizes this in her own introduction, and throughout the book she remains true to the parameters of her original goals.
Luttrell divides her book into three parts. In the first, she offers the context in which she did her study. In addition to a brief mention of the methods she used, Luttrell describes the physical and historical context of the PPPT Program. She describes the Piedmont area of North Carolina from which the students in the PPPT Program come as well as a thorough description of the PPPT Program and how it has changed over time. Again, Luttrell demonstrates astute balance between the history of policies regarding the education of pregnant teens in general and the PPPT Program itself, all the while weaving the voices of her subjects within her description and analysis. In the latter part of the first section, Luttrell moves away from the girls’ voices in order to address larger social concerns as a vital part of the context of her work. Again, in doing so she maintains a more authentic sense of representation of the girls’ stories overall by not making them explicit “poster children” for issues of class, race, and gender. I believe this balance between theory and the ethnographic substance of her work is vital and one of the reasons she is so successful in this book.
In the second part of the book, Luttrell examines the girls’ representations of themselves. She offers these representations in the forms of self-portraits, personal collages, and role-playing of “pregnancy stories.” According to Luttrell, she hoped to “convey something about selfhood, identity, and agency that many other books about poor and working-class pregnant teenagers have not” (p. xvii). Again, she succeeds because her focus is the stories and experiences of the girls as they are manifested within their representations. Her analysis of those representations and the theories that add depth to the analysis are secondary – allowing the reader to see and experience the worlds of the PPPT girls first.
In Part III of her book, Luttrell addresses the theoretical and methodological implications of her work. She deals very honestly with the challenge of personal ethnography – of being part of the experience while simultaneously trying to represent it in an authentic manner. This makes her book all the more valuable as a resource for individuals studying ethnographic methodology as well as those involved in sex education for teens. She shows how her multiple methods of inquiry offered insights beyond current research on adolescent sexuality. As she notes, previous work about teen sex dealt more with deviance than desire. Her work, in contrast, demonstrates that teen sex is more than an issue of timing. It involves beliefs and assumptions about sex as well as relations of power. Relating this to the implications for sex education curriculum, Luttrell contends the following:
Developmentally speaking, rather than focusing on the “whole person” and how sexual feelings and actions get incorporated into adolescent identities an relationships, sex education is highly fragmented, often focusing solely on health-related behaviors and risks. (p. 141)
Beyond Balance: Inquiry and Connoisseurship
With the three parts of Luttrell’s book in mind, I think it is fair to assess its effectiveness according to the three dilemmas she identifies from Ruth Behar and Deborah Gordon’s (1995) work regarding ethnography. First, does Luttrell effectively claim knowledge about the subject of pregnant teens? I believe she does, in fact, demonstrate a sense of authority regarding the subject by virtue of her attention to so many elements surrounding the education of pregnant teens – considering history, policy, and general social sentiment. Further, she considers the tension between education as a right as represented through public policy and education as a responsibility as manifested through curriculum set up for pregnant teens. With the breadth and degree of analysis that Luttrell offers regarding the education of pregnant teens, she establishes the context as problematic rather than merely positing the context as fact. Thus, readers are able to explore the implications and challenges posed by the context rather than accepting it as given.
Second, does Luttrell represent the pregnant girls’ culture without reducing its complexity and variability? In the same manner that the author does not present the girls of the PPPT Program as poster children for issues of race and gender, she also does not “use” them as mere social phenomena within a social critique of the education of pregnant teens. Luttrell moves beyond what we know from statistics and social theory and presents their stories in their own voices. In this way, the reader can experience the pride and tenacity as well as the confusion and insecurities of the young women. By letting each student speak for herself, Luttrell creates space within which readers can confront their own assumptions about pregnant teens.
Thus, I believe Luttrell has used ethnographic inquiry to achieve what other forms of inquiry often do not: representation of the complexity of her subjects. By providing multiple forms of representation - how the girls now see themselves, how they would like to see themselves, and how they experience their daily worlds - readers are able to see beyond typical stereotypes of pregnant teens. I believe this realization is the first crucial step in rethinking policies and curricula for not only pregnant teens but also for all students who are marginalized within our everyday school experiences.
Finally, to what degree does Luttrell effectively discern between the voices and experiences of the subjects and her own? To judge this, it helps to first consider a critical element of ethnography presented by Lawrence-Lightfoot and Davis (1997): the researcher does not come to his or her work with a blank slate. Therefore, it is essential that the researcher needs to be aware of her own context and the assumptions and expectations that come into play within the inquiry. They further contend that without such awareness, the researcher will not be open to possible surprises, inconsistencies, and affirmations. When a researcher can recognize the intersections of her own personal context with the context of the research and is further able to articulate those intersections, she then becomes part of the research. Lawrence-Lightfoot and Davis (1997) go on to point out that it is essential that the researcher balance her personal context with that of the researched. They note, “Like all elements of context, personal context warrants inclusion only insofar as it illuminates the subject of the portrait. (p. 69).”
I believe there are moments of awareness of self in relation to the subject in the work of some researchers – points where these intersections becomes poignant in their analysis of data. I believe there is also a risk for some researchers, as Lawrence-Lightfoot and Davis warn, to become so engrossed in their own personal contexts that the experiences of the subjects become overshadowed. When, however, a researcher can maintain a heightened sense of this awareness throughout her work and balance it with the lived experiences of her subjects, I believe she achieves what Eisner (1991) calls “connoisseurship.” According to Eisner, connoisseurship requires a sense of “epistemic seeing (p. 68),” a thoughtful negotiation of the particular and how the particular fits within a larger framework. Because Luttrell began this project with a solid grounding in feminist theory as well as a broad understanding of the social and curricular implications of education of pregnant teens and because she was able to develop an authentic relationship with her subjects, she demonstrates this epistemic seeing in her analysis. She recognizes the challenge of representing the lives and experiences of marginalized subjects – particularly from her own position of privilege. As a result, her honest portrayal of that struggle can help other white, middle class academics to explore the implications of whiteness within their own work.
Ethnography as a Heuristic Device
Whatever we learn, we learn from experience (Dewey, 1929; 1997; 1998). What Dewey (1990) said of children is equally applicable to academics, “Nothing can be developed out of nothing; nothing but the crude can be developed out of the crude – and this is what surely happens when we throw the child back upon his self as a finality, and invite him to spin new truths of nature and conduct out of that” (p. 196). While we often find ourselves quite comfortable in the world of theory and abstraction, without grounding in the real experiences of others, we run the risk of losing the public-ness of our intellectualism.
We may be intellectually good, but can we as Dewey (1944) admonishes, be good for something? Can our intellectual endeavors esteem something greater than our own personal intellectual achievement? When I ponder this academic conundrum, I cannot help but recall my own past experiences as a teacher in an inner-city setting. I remember going to hear bell hooks (1996) read exerts from her then new book, Killing Rage. I remember the impact her words had on me – the experiences of unfathomable racism she encountered that sparked her writing of the book. For the first time, I think I really realized how I could never completely understand what it meant to a person of color in the world. All of the theoretical texts I had read in my doctoral program could not impress upon me the daily realities of my privilege and the implications of the absence of such privilege. While I could write about hegemony and marginalization, particularly if my audience was fellow academics of privilege, I could never fully grasp the depth of the implications of power and privilege for those marginalized individuals I had intellectualized.
The following week, one of my students was falsely accused of possessing drugs – stopped in the hall by another white teacher. The rage I saw within his response became clearer because of the experiences hooks had conveyed the week before. All I could do in response was to try to convey, however inarticulately, my newfound sense of humility – to admit to my student that I could never truly understand the depth of rage he felt at that time.
I believe Luttrell offers images within her work that are as equally as powerful as those offered by bell hooks during that night I heard her read from Killing Rage. She achieves a vital relationship with her subjects that accounts for the depth and authenticity of her inquiry (Lincoln & Guba, 1985). She and the young women in the PPPT program develop a sense of mutual vulnerability (Adair Breault, 2003) over time. I believe it is the same kind of mutual vulnerability that Freire (1998) describes as a prerequisite for critical educators, and it is an essential element for such personal ethnography:
One of the most important tasks of critical educational practice is to make possible the conditions in which learners, in their interaction with one another and with their teachers, engage in the experience of assuming themselves as social, historical, thinking, communicating, transformative, creative persons; dreamers of possible utopias, capable of being angry because of a capacity to love. (p. 45)
Perhaps this is why two years following the study, as indicated in the Epilogue, Luttrell was introduced by one of subjects as “her teacher.”
Luttrell’s Audience
I believe a number of audiences could benefit from reading Luttrell’s book. It is an excellent resource for an ethnography course where students can see the method as it is enacted. By reading Pregnant Bodies, Fertile Minds, ethnography students could more fully recognize the complexity of the researcher as the primary instrument of inquiry. Further, they could witness the exciting challenge of “activist ethnography” as Luttrell presents it - work that changes the way the researchers and the researched see them selves and how they are seen by others (p. 147).
I also believe the book would be a valuable resource in a number of graduate and undergraduate teacher education courses. As I indicated earlier, I believe the book introduces issues and theory regarding race, gender, and power in ways within which students can more clearly identify because it is grounded in the experiences of the PPPT girls. I think grounding the issues of gender, race, and power in schools directly within an ethnography offers an experiential base from which students could further abstract and explore ramifications in their current and future work as teachers.
I also believe current and future administrators would benefit from reading this book. As a former administrator, I remember that much of the representation of the marginalized students of my former school came in the form of unpleasant office visits resulting from teacher referrals. While my own interests, background, and education helped to prepare me to see beyond stereotypes and look for the complexity of the individuals I encountered, I know that, unfortunately, not every administrator has such a background or a disposition. An ethnography that offers such a poignant representation of the complexity of the lives of these girls would help current and future administrators to look beyond the surface of their daily experiences to see the complexity of their students as well as the systemic elements that objectify those students and perpetuate the cycles of injustice.
Finally, while it may be considered “cheating,” I believe everyone else – whether a parent or not – could benefit from reading this book. Ironically, I discovered I was pregnant while reading Luttrell’s book. As I experienced the first doctor’s visit, the images from Luttrell’s book that portrayed the students’ own experiences within the clinics haunted me. As a mature, professional, white woman, I have the luxury of comprehensive and compassionate care from nurses and my doctor. In addition, all those hearing the news have responded with smiles and congratulatory comments. Throughout these early months, I continue to reflect on how very different my own experience must be from the experiences of those pregnant teens. Yet, like the teens in her book, I am going through the experience for the first time with similar questions, tensions, and mixed emotions. Like that night listening to bell hooks read from her book, I have been granted a greater awareness of the very real differences in race, class, and age about which I had previously only theorized. With this in mind, I’d say that Luttrell’s “activist ethnography” has done more than change the way the researcher and the researched see themselves in their world. It has afforded an opportunity for me – and anyone else who reads the book – to see ourselves differently as well.
References
Adair Breault, Donna. (2003). Flesh and stone: The aesthetics of public space and its implications for professional association. Educational Theory, 53(2), 185-201.
Behar, Ruth, and Deborah Gordon (Eds.). (1995). Women writing culture. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Dewey, John. (1929). Experience and nature. Chicago: Open Court.
Dewey, John. (1944). Democracy and education. New York: Macmillan.
Dewey, John. (1980). Art as experience. New York: Pedigree Books.
Dewey, John. (1990). The school and society and the child and the curriculum. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Dewey, John. (1997). How we think. New York: Dover.
Dewey, John. (1998). Experience and education. West Lafayette, IN: Kappa Delta Pi.
Eisner, Elliott W. (1991). The enlightened eye: Qualitative inquiry and the enhancement of educational practice. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company.
Freire, Paulo. (1998). Pedagogy of freedom: Ethics, democracy, and civic courage. Translated by Patrick Clarke. Lanham: Roman & Littlefield Publishers.
hooks, bell. (1996). Killing rage. New York: Henry & Holt Company.
Lawrence-Lightfoot, Sara & Davis, Jessica Hoffman. (1997). The art and science of portraiture. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers.
Lincoln, Y.S., & Guba, E.G. (1985). Naturalistic inquiry. Beverly Hills, CA: SAGE.
About the Reviewer
Donna Adair Breault is an assistant professor of curriculum studies at Illinois State University. Her research explores inquiry in education couched largely in Dewey’s theory of inquiry and includes work in the following: notions of public space, epistemic responsibility within educational research, and inquiry in practice within schools. She has recently published in Educational Theory, Educational Studies, and is co-editor of a book entitled The Educative Experience: Educators Reflect on the Writings of John Dewey that will be published by Kappa Delta Pi later this year.
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