Voices of Resistance : Interdisciplinary Approaches to Chican@ Children's Literature

The banning of Mexican-American Studies and censorship of Chican@-authored books in Arizona were part of a succession of anti-Mexican and anti-Chican@ policies that were enacted across the state and in the education system. The counterstories offered through these classes and literature not only created a sense of cultural inclusion, but ignited a political and activist consciousness among the mostly Chican@ youth, and reinvigorated conversations among educators about the teaching of race, ethnicity, and culture in the classroom, particularly through youth literature. While most work on youth literature has emphasized "multicultural" literature as a means of being inclusive, Voices of Resistance: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Chican@ Children's Literature recognizes that our present moment--one that is rife with continued anti-Mexican sentiment but that has given rise to our first Chicano National Poet Laureate--demands a more focused study of children's and young adult literature by and about Chican@s. This collection re-examines how we view multicultural and diversity literature and recognize literature that invites social transformation. Using multi- and interdisciplinary perspectives to critically examine a wide range of Chican@ children's pictures book and young adult novels, this collection reaffirms Chicano@ children's literature as a means to achieve equity and social change. Tracing Chican@ identity and consciousness.Entre Tejana y Chicana: tracing proto-Chicana identity and consciousness in Tejana young adult fiction and poetry /Larissa M. Mercado-López ;Imagineering a new Mexican American girl: Josefina Montoya (1824) /Patricia Marina Trujillo ;A bone to pick: Día de los Muertos in children's literature /Roxana Loza and Tanya González ;Águila: personal reflections on reading Chicanz picture books from the inside out /Lettycia Terrones --Negotiating gender and sexuality.A portrait of the artist as a muchachito: Juan Felipe Herrera's Downtown boy as a poetic springboard into critical masculinity studies /Phillip Serrato ;Not-so-sweet quince: teenage angst and mother-daughter strife in Belinda Acosta's young adult nover, Damas, dramas, and Ana Ruiz /Cristina Herrera ;"You wanna be a chump/or a champ?": constructions of masculinity, absent fathers, and conocimiento in Juan Felipe Herrera's Downtown boy /Sonia Alejandra Rodríguez, PhD ;Representations of sexual and queer identities in Chicana/o-Latina/o children's literature /Cecilia J. Aragón --Transformative pedagogies: reflections from inside and outside the classroom.Chillante pedagogy, "She worlds," and testimonio as text/image: toward a Chicana feminist pedagogy in the works of Maya Christina Gonzalez /Elena Avilés ;Was it all a dream? Chicana/o children and Mestiza consciousness in Super Cilantro Girl (2003) and "Tata's gift" (2014) /Katherine Elizabeth Bundy ;Translanguaging con mi abuela: Chican@ children's literature as a means to elevate language practices in our homes /Laura Alamillo ;Identity texts in linguistically and culturally sustaining classrooms: Chican@ children's literature, student voice, and identity /Lilian Cibils, Enrique Avalos, Virginia Gallegos, and Fabián Martínez This edited volume offers an interdisciplinary and expansive analysis of Chican@ children’s literature in light of current political, social, and cultural trends.