Latino/a Discourses: On Language, Identity, and Literacy Education (Cross Current)

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. </

Valerie M. Balester received her doctorate in English with a specialization in rhetoric in 1988 from The University of Texas at Austin. She also studied English, rhetoric, and composition at The Pennsylvania State University, where she received a Masters in 1982. She became interested in the writing of African-American students when she taught basic writing at Penn State in the late 1970s. In 1988, Balester became Assistant Professor of English at Texas A&M University. Her teaching experience includes first-year and advanced composition. With the help of Texas A&M graduate students, she founded the department's Writing Center and currently serves as its Executive Director. Her research into the rhetoric of African-American students and its effects on their writing continues.

Michelle Hall Kells is Assistant Professor in the Rhetoric and Writing program at the University of New Mexico. She has ten years college teaching experience. Kells teaches courses in Rhetoric, Composition, Sociolinguistics. Her areas of specialization (civil rights rhetorics, sociolinguistics, and composition/literacy studies) coalesce around problems related to ethnolinguistic stratification and intercultural communication. Kells launched Attending to the Margins: Writing, Researching, and Teaching on the Front Lines (Heinemann-Boynton-Cook, 1999) with Valerie Balester.

Victor Villanueva is Professor and Chair of the English Department at Washington State University. A popular writer and speaker and recipient of numerous awards, he is the former chair of the Conference on College Composition and Communication.