Welcome to the first Weekend Picks for September 2025! This month we have our picks coming to us from teacher-scholar Dr. Dan Stockwell who encourages us to look at the work of Ibi Zoboi.
 Dan Stockwell | Dr. Dan Stockwell, a former high school English language arts (ELA) teacher, is an assistant professor of English Education at California State University, Bakersfield. Dan serves as a member of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) Secondary Section Steering Committee. He has recent publications in NCTE’s English Journal and in the California Association of Teachers of English’s California English journal. His book, Teaching for CHANGE in the ELA Classroom, was published in March of 2025 by Routledge. Dan’s scholarship investigates how secondary ELA teachers can provide critical literacy pedagogy, even in restrictive contexts. |
Nigeria Jones by Ibi Zoboi
 | What happens when a teenager raised in a separatist movement is forced to question what she’s been taught? Ibi Zoboi provides an answer in Nigeria Jones. At the heart of this coming-of-age novel, which takes place in contemporary Philadelphia, is Nigeria’s search for her mother, who lived with Nigeria and her father, the leader of a Black separatist group, until she disappeared after the birth of Nigeria’s younger brother. Sixteen-year-old Nigeria has spent her whole life surrounded by her father’s followers and listening to her father’s lectures, debates, and podcasts where he espouses views about race, racism, and politics that can be at times liberatory and at times constricting. Her father wants Nigeria to remain homeschooled so she can spend her time researching and compiling notes that he’ll use to “write” his next book, The Black Man’s Constitution. |
As Nigeria learns more about her missing mother, she realizes that her mother penned most of the words in the books that bear only Nigeria’s father’s name. Through a letter given to her by one of her mother’s friends, Nigeria also learns that her mother does not want Nigeria to be homeschooled anymore. Her mother wants Nigeria to be free from some of the more oppressive ideas her, at times, controlling father promotes. Nigeria decides to go to a private school that her cousin and former friend attend, despite her father’s opposition. Conflict inevitably ensues.
| Throughout the novel, Nigeria realizes that people and the world are more complicated than her father’s teachings have led her to believe. As the story progresses, Nigeria discovers who she wants to be, and she bravely follows her mother and her ancestors toward that destination. Nigeria Jones is an excellent novel for anyone to read because it challenges readers to question their beliefs and to work toward making a more just world. I also highly recommend that secondary ELA educators consider using this novel in their teaching. Because of Nigeria’s upbringing, at the beginning of the novel, she has already attained a sociopolitical consciousness that many ELA teachers hope their own students can achieve. Throughout the novel, Nigeria challenges racist and oppressive systems and perspectives. Still, because her father’s movement upholds the patriarchy, Nigeria must discover who she wants to be and embrace the power that she and her identity hold. Therefore, this novel is an excellent tool teachers can use to support their students in embracing their own agency to change the world by being their radically authentic selves–That’s a lesson (and a challenge) the novel offers every reader. |  Ibi Zoboi |
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