Kristy Cooper

No one at the library she worked at knew about Kristy Cooper's other job. On the surface, it seem that being a librarian and a stripper are polar opposite jobs, but in practice Kristy found that they were not nearly as different as most people would think. Strip club customers and library patrons both produce wild stories, and you have to be good at working with people in both professions (whether your clothes are off or not). In this first-hand account, Kristy describes her decision to get into stripping to make her student loan debt more manageable, overcome her introversion to learn how to hustle customers, learn about sex worker advocacy, and finally transition into full-time library work. For years Kristy hid her stripping history to fit into the mold of a respectable librarian, but as time went on she realized this wasn't something she should feel ashamed about. Telling these kinds of stories helps destigmatize sex work, which makes it safer for current sex workers. Librarianship is changing, especially as the profession begins to evaluate itself through a greater anti-oppression lens. Librarians can learn a lot about class struggle and privacy advocacy from sex workers.

Inside Urban Charter Schools offers an unprecedentedly intimate glimpse into the world of charter schools by profiling five high-performing urban charter schools serving predominantly low-income, minority youth in Massachusetts. Interviews, focus groups, and classroom observations conducted over the course of two years flesh out rich and colorful portraits of daily life in these schools. Using an analytic framework grounded in research on nonprofit management and effective schools, the authors show that these schools excel along the organizational dimensions of structure, systems, human resource strategies, culture, and clarity of mission. By raising provocative questions for parents, educators, policymakers, and scholars, the book makes a powerful contribution to important conversations about the purpose of K–12 schooling in the twenty-first century and what it will take to enable all schools—whether charter or traditional—to successfully educate all students.