Perfection Learning
Spare Parts: Four Undocumented Teenagers, One Ugly Robot and the Battle for Theamerican Dream
Key Metrics
- Joshua Davis
- Perfection Learning
- Hardcover
- 9781680650389
- 8.2 X 5.6 X 0.9 inches
- 0.7 pounds
- Education > Multicultural Education
- English
Secure TransactionBook Description
Four undocumented Mexican American students, two great teachers, one robot-building contest . . . and a major motion picture
In 2004, four Latino teenagers arrived at the Marine Advanced Technology Education Robotics Competition at the University of California, Santa Barbara. They were born in Mexico but raised in Phoenix, Arizona, where they attended an underfunded public high school. No one had ever suggested to Oscar, Cristian, Luis, or Lorenzo that they might amount to much--but two inspiring science teachers had convinced these impoverished, undocumented kids from the desert who had never even seen the ocean that they should try to build an underwater robot.
And build a robot they did. Their robot wasn't pretty, especially compared to those of the competition. They were going up against some of the best collegiate engineers in the country, including a team from MIT backed by a $10,000 grant from ExxonMobil. The Phoenix teenagers had scraped together less than $1,000 and built their robot out of scavenged parts. This was never a level competition--and yet, against all odds . . . they won!
But this is just the beginning for these four, whose story--which became a key inspiration to the DREAMers movement--will go on to include first-generation college graduations, deportation, bean-picking in Mexico, and service in Afghanistan.
Joshua Davis's Spare Parts is a story about overcoming insurmountable odds and four young men who proved they were among the most patriotic and talented Americans in this country--even as the country tried to kick them out.
Author Bio
I teach and research broadly in twentieth-century United States History with a focus on social movements, policing, capitalism, urban history, and African American History. My book, From Head Shops to Whole Foods: The Rise and Fall of Activist Entrepreneurs (Columbia University Press, 2017) explores how small businesses such as organic food stores, head shops, feminist businesses, and African American bookstores emerged from social movements and countercultures in the 1960s and '70s. Forerunners of today's social entrepreneurs, these companies sought to democratize American business while advancing political liberation and cultural transformation.
I’m also co-editor of the essay collection Baltimore Revisited: Stories of Inequality and Resistance in a U.S. City . My research has been supported by fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Fulbright Scholar Program. I've written for Jacobin, The Washington Post, and The Atlantic , and my work has been featured in Time , Slate, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Philadelphia Inquirer , and USA Today .
I am also a devoted public historian with a deep interest in working with communities beyond universities. I serve on the advisory board of the Baltimore Uprising 2015 Archive Project and as a research associate for the Library of Congress’s Radio Preservation Task Force. I also co-directed "Media and the Movement," a NEH-funded oral history and radio digitization project on activists of the Civil Rights and Black Power era who worked in media.
Education
Ph.D., M.A., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
B.A., University of Pennsylvania
Source: University of Baltimore
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