Redefining Terms, Rethinking Concepts

Abstract

Chapter 3 spotlights writings by a suite of Latinx and Indigenous authors whose work spans the 1960s to the present day, examining how these authors’ cross-writing projects have deconstructed and redefined the concepts of colonialism, “civilization,” and cultural belonging. Children’s books by writers including Sandra Cisneros, Louise Erdrich, N. Scott Momaday, and Esmeralda Santiago scrutinize US settler colonialism and examine its relationship to gentrification, western models of environmental violence, and racist patterns of white flight. They also validate the hybrid cultures of resistance that have developed in response to these pathologies, relying on the agency of independent, confident child protagonists who rework received notions of identity and history from an actively anticolonial perspective. In the process, these books stand to engage readers of all ages with a constellation of vital questions.