Perpetuating Joy in Affinity Spaces Through Intercultural Pedagogy

Humans have never been more interconnected to one another or more disconnected from one another. The Covid-19 pandemic… has proven that the health of every person on the planet is interconnected... so too are our many intersecting social, legal, and political systems built on another human-made concept―race… Democracy itself is under a lot of stress as its ability to tolerate…diversity without oppressing minorities comes into legitimate question…Whether we get revolution or reform, civil war or truth, healing, and reconciliation remains to be seen…Mahatma Ghandi was right, “We must be the change we want to see in the world.”
In Perpetuating Joy in Affinity Spaces Through Intercultural Pedagogy, Michael Taylor offers us a glimpse of what that could look like. Speaking from and to his…academic training, deep experience educating educators, and lived experience of taking action for social change…we are offered guideposts and wisdom to navigate the terrain ahead…I have witnessed and participated in his academic and teaching universe where he marries theory and practice. His book pulls together these things―emotion, intellect, and action―and it makes for powerful medicine. Taylor is well aware that we cannot appropriate other cultures but that there is a value to each culture on the planet. We can and must be exactly who we are. Being the change does not require the abandonment of our heritage. But at the same time, as Taylor shows, we cannot afford to parochial in our thinking, hunkered down in echo chambers, exacerbating tensions or ignoring oppression. Now is the time to build bridges, to explore the many intersecting layers to our individual and collective identities, to expand and be intentional about our affinity spaces. There is a lot at stake, but our capacity and need for change has never been greater.
-Anton Treuer, Professor of Ojibwe at Bemidji State University, and author
-Excerpts from the book’s preface