Breaking Free: The Life and Times of Peter McLaren, Radical Educator - Softcover

Peter McLaren is Distinguished Professor in Critical Studies at Attallah College of Educational Studies, Chapman University and Chair Professor, Northeast Normal University, China. A political activist and award-winning author, he has published 50 books in the areas of political sociology of education, critical pedagogy and liberation theology.

Miles Wilson is an artist, filmmaker, and currently attending Chapman University at Dodge College to obtain his master’s degree in film editing. During that time, he’s been working freelance as an editor for small independent shorts while dabbling in storyboard drawing concept art on the side. Connect with Miles on FaceBook, Instagram, and YouTube.

“This Cartoon Book―Banda Dessinada―is Remarkable, Powerful, Incisive, Accessible, Dramatic, Marxist, Revolutionary, Generous-like the man himself―Peter McLaren. Brought to Life! A Revolutionary Document! Wow! Zap! Kapow! Peter McLaren―remarkable global revolutionary activist educator―brought to full-colour life. Brilliant combination of McLaren's Life, Influences, Education Politics, Fire and Poetics with the Cartoon/Comic form. But this ain't no Cartoon Character! A Revolutionary Document!”

“ZAP! POW! KABOOM! Here is a life story destined to be made into a comic book―the only medium wide and weird enough to capture the complex, dynamic, multidimensional, generative, shifting, and creative force that is Peter McLaren. Read this book and be inspired to dive into the contradictions, to launch your own voyage of discovery and surprise, to have your blooming in the noise and chaos of the whirlwind.”

"The indomitable Peter McLaren is the living embodiment of critical pedagogy, a truly radical educator who has always been interested in stretching the limits of genre to explore, innovate and communicate. In the comic Breaking Free we see his ability to reinvent himself and communicate himself and his ideas afresh. That's why we all love him."

“Albert Einstein once said that a life lived in the service of others is a life worth living. Now comes the story of Peter McLaren. The life and times of this renowned radical educator, as recounted in these engaging pages, holds up a mirror in whose reflection we see the great aspirations of our age. At once a piece of art, social criticism, and critical pedagogy, here is a portrait of the contemporary struggles of the oppressed, told to the backdrop of McLaren’s biography. Nothing less than a modern epic!”

"McLaren's led a politically and intellectually rich ― and entertaining ― life, which is renewed through this compelling graphic novel. Each page is filled with important and relevant lessons we would do well to heed as we struggle for peace and justice."

“Peter McLaren is one of the leading architects of contemporary critical theory, a radical activist, a storyteller, a revolutionary Marxist humanist, a scholar of liberation theology, the poet laureate of the educational left, and much more. In the face of his tremendous achievements, Breaking Free: The Life and Times of Peter McLaren, Radical Educator avoids the trap of representing Peter as a classical comic hero. Instead, its authors weave a warm story about a working-class boy who has risen to become his own type of hero: an intellectual hero, a hero of humility and respect for everyone, who inspires and gently pushes people to do the best of their ability for the benefit of humankind. Breaking Free: The Life and Times of Peter McLaren, Radical Educator is a superb biographical sketch aimed at those who know little about Peter’s work, an eye opener for those who read Peter’s works but never met him in person, and an important contextualisation for those who seek deeper understanding of relationships between Peter’s works and the person behind them. With this extraordinarily important book, Peter McLaren once again crosses the well-entrenched border between ‘serious’ scholarship and popular culture and insists that the path to emancipation and freedom belongs to everyone.”

"A comic book! A comic book! But there’s nothing really comic about this graphic autobiography by one of our era’s most creative philosophers of education. After branching out from Paulo Freire to liberation theology, Peter McLaren’s poetic genius and astounding imagination have outdone themselves here with “Pow!”, “Crash!”, and “Bang!” that will leave readers inspired, breathless and smiling with delight."

“A valuable sort of "McLaren for Beginners" in which Peter offers his own Pedagogy of Hope in the stylistic tradition of Zap Comix! The resulting graphic memoir is a radically socialist and countercultural portrait of a life imaged both as and on behalf of the attempted humanization of the world. Critical pedagogy by any means necessary...”