I am happy to announce the release of my latest book, co-authored with Dr. James Kirylo for the University of South Carolina.  James and I had a chance meeting three years ago in Philadelphia at the annual meeting of the American Education Research Association.  We struck up a conversation that continued via email and phone calls, and eventually resulted in this book. Together we explore an area of Freire’s life and work that has not been given much attention: his Christian faith.  While often at odds with the Roman Catholic Church of his youth, Freire was a lifelong “friend of Jesus.” Some of his core concepts like conscientization, utopia, humanization, the Easter experience and human unfinishedness have theological and spiritual roots.  This is what we describe and explore in the book. and we hope our contribution adds to the corpus of writings examining the life, work and thought of this seminal educator.

Here are the chapters:

• Introduction
• Spirituality and Paulo Freire
• The Easter Experience: Conversion to the People
• Personalism, Humanism and a Freirean Spirituality Toward Humanizing Humanity
• Hope, History and Utopia
• Ground in the Well of Love
• A Man Who Humbly Lived in Authenticity
• Conscientization: Inner and Outer Transformation for Liberation
• A Freirean Imprint on Liberation Theology
• Epilogue: A Call to Reinvent

One of the most rewarding aspects of the book is the Foreword by Freire’s wife, Nita Freire.  She affirms what we identified, that he was a man of deep faith and spirituality. The writing and publishing of this book is the fulfillment of a dream for many years birthed when I wrote a paper on Freire’s concept of hope for a Faith integration paper required as part of my tenure and promotion process.  I am so thankful to my co-author James for his wisdom and diligence, as well as those who read and gave feedback. I am now glad to share this deeply personal work with all of you. You may order the book from Sense or Amazon. I hope it enriches, or in some case piques, your interest in Freire, who for me is one of the premier educators and thinkers of the twentieth century.