Latino/A Discourses: On Language, Identity & Literacy Education

With the growth of the Latino/a population in the United States as a backdrop, "Latino/a Discourses" presents an incisive and timely focus on composition, literacy studies, and creative writing. How can teachers in higher education work with Latino/a students to negotiate the demands of schooling and the priorities of family life? What can we learn from the challenges and triumphs of Latinos/as in our classrooms? How can we help to legitimate linguistic diversity within the university classroom, our discipline, and our society? This groundbreaking collection helps teachers to navigate this intercultural and international terrain. Contributors to the volume interrogate the concept of "effective literacy" by examining diverse subjects: Edited American English, Spanglish, linguistic codeswitching, the "classroom" and private vs. public discourse, the labeling of student language, identity labels, and literacy models. Equally important is the focus on diverse sites-the classroom, the community outreach program, the immigrant literacy center, and the bilingual home-sites crucial to the critical literacies and complex discourses of Latino/a students and teachers, writers and readers. Rigorous and insightful, the contributors to Latino/a Discourses offer helpful strategies for the English classroom while challenging conventional notions about composition, culture, community, and creative writing.