This book offers an exciting new perspective on language socialization in Latino families. Tackling mainstream views of childhood and the role and nature of language socialization, leading researchers and teacher trainers provide a historical, political, and cultural context for the language attitudes and socialization practices that help determine what and how Latino children speak, read, and write. Representing a radical departure from the ways in which most educators have been taught to think about first language acquisition and second language learning, this timely volume:
Contemporary U.S. Latino/a Literary Criticism (American Literature Readings in the Twenty-First Century)
“This collection brings together an impressive group of established and young scholars to produce a multi-layered, theoretically complex approach to the practices of Latino/a criticism. These essays continue the dialogue about ambivalent identities and the usefulness (or lack thereof) of contemporary literary theory in helping scholars tease out the meaning of Latino/a texts. It should prove a valuable and popular text for scholars and students of Latino/a literature.”--Lisa Paravisini, Vassar College
From East L.A. to the barrios of New York City and the Cuban neighborhoods of Miami, Latino literature, or literature written by Hispanic peoples of the United States, is the written word of North America's vibrant Latino communities. Emerging from the fusion of Spanish, North American, and African cultures, it has always been part of the American mosaic. Written for students and general readers, this encyclopedia surveys the vast landscape of Latino literature from the colonial era to the present.
As a young girl growing up in El Paso, Texas, Pat Mora felt as though she belonged to two worlds - the American culture of Texas and the Latino culture of Mexico. When her parents gave her a typewriter as an 8th-grade graduation gift, Mora started expressing her feelings through poetry. She would go on to become the Chicana voice of the Southwest, telling stories about the desert and the Latino people who are forced to straddle two cultures. Mora has also turned her talents toward authoring storybooks for young readers
Latino Language and Literacy in Ethnolinguistic Chicago
This volume--along with its companion Ethnolinguistic Chicago: Language
and Literacy in the City's Neighborhoods--fills an important gap in
research on Chicago and, more generally, on language use in globalized
metropolitan areas. Often cited as a quintessential American city,
Chicago is, and always has been, a city of immigrants. It is one of the
most linguistically diverse cities in the United States and home to one
of the largest and most diverse Latino communities. Although language
is unquestionably central to social identity, and Chicago has been well
studied by scholars interested in ethnicity, until now no one has
focused--as do the contributors to these volumes--on the related issues
of language and ethnicity.