Bibliography

In 1987 I had the honor of directing the world premiere of Rudolfo Anaya’s play, Who Killed Don José? for La Compañía de Teatro de Alburquerque1. Much has been written about the import and impact of Anaya’s novels and other writings but very little has been published about his plays. In his “Comments from the playwright” preceding his collection titled Billy the Kid and other Plays, Anaya wrote, “I was a drop in the bucket of the Chicano Theater movement that came alive during the Chicano Movement of the 1960s and 70s.” (Anaya, Who Killed Don José x). He then reminds his readers that performances and rituals have been a part of the of the indigenous, Spanish and mestizo cultures of New Mexico for centuries. Indeed, Los Pastores is undoubtedly the play in which a fifth-grade Rudy Anaya played that shepherd, a play that was brought to the Américas by the Spanish colonizers. It was only natural that this man of many voices should turn his gaze to the stage as another platform on which to bring to life his fellow Nuevo Mexicanos, their history and cultures.

Inside a cardboard box, Mama packed a tin of chicken soup, heavy on cilantro, along with a jar of peppermint tea, peppers from our garden, and a hunk of white goat cheese that smelled like Uncle Jose’s feet. That meant one thing. “Roja, your abuelita is not feeling well,” Mama told me. “I want you to take this food to her.” “But Mama, me and Lupe Maldonado are going to the movies,” I replied, but felt guilty as soon as I’d said it. These are the lines which open Patricia Santos Marcantonio’s fractured version of the fairy tale Little Red Riding Hood. In her retelling of this and other ten fairy tales published in the volume Red Ridin’ in the Hood and Other Cuentos (Farrar Straus Giroux, 2005), the Mexican American author makes use of a series of elements to provide a Latinx version of these fairy tales to counterbalance the lack of representation of Latinx children in the books she read growing up in the United States. In my paper I will explore the elements Marcantonio modifies in order to subvert these fairy tales with a Latinx flavor.

Este ensayo explora la noción de violencia en Yo tuve un sueño: El viaje de los niños centroamericanos a Estados Unidos del autor mexicano Juan Pablo Villalobos. Esta colección de crónicas narra las experiencias de jóvenes migrantes indocumentados durante las olas migratorias que se produjeron entre 2011 y 2014. Si bien las historias aquí descritas muestran sin duda la violencia como tema central, también presentan narraciones de nostalgia, pérdida, solidaridad y compañerismo. Estas capas adicionales sirven para atemperar el tono dramático general, destacando la resistencia de los menores frente al discurso predominante de violencia y amenaza a menudo asociado a la inmigración indocumentada.

Latinø children’s literature scholars point to the early 1990s as a crucial time in the history of US children’s literature by and about Latinøs, rightly claiming that up to this time, such books presented miniscule publication rates and received limited mainstream attention (Koss et al.; Naidoo “Opening doors”; Nilsson). In some cases, books with Latinø themes presented highly problematic racioethnic representations in both their verbal (written) and visual narratives, particularly when created by non-Latinøs (Quiroa, “Promising Portals”). These trends continued beyond the 1990s until more recently when shifts in the larger field of US multicultural literature by and about diverse racial and ethnic groups occurred1. The history of children’s literature by and about Latinøs in the U.S. is not as robust as that afforded mainstream and European literature, and deserves periodic documentation that equally takes into account their verbal (written) and visual (illustrations) narratives. Therefore, I provide a historical review of related, extant scholarship and book titles of this body of books, specifically focusing on those in picturebook formats. A central tenet for my work is that their visual narratives have received too little consideration from an interdisciplinary approach, including the fields of a) education (English language arts, biliteracy, and social studies); b) librarianship, c) ethnic/cultural studies, d) Spanish language and literature studies, e) semiotics, and d) art. Thus, an interdisciplinary approach can broaden understandings of how Latinø children and their narratives are portrayed in their picturebooks today2. This review is also crucial given the increasing technological advances of the twenty-first century resulting in greater availability and emphasis on reading multimodal texts like picturebooks and graphic novels (Chesner; Serafini et al.).

Este trabajo tiene como objetivo el reflexionar en torno al modo en el que se representa a los niños no acompañados que, por razones diversas, se embarcan en el “camino al Norte” a bordo de La Bestia desde Suramérica y Centroamérica a los Estados Unidos. Para ello, se propone el análisis de dos películas de géneros y estilos diferentes que comparten línea argumental, el viaje de este colectivo: el documental de Rebecca Cammisa Which Way Home (2009) y la película de ficción dirigida por Patricia Riggen Under the Same Moon (2007). Tratará además de proponer unas reflexiones con relación a la cualidad pedagógica de ambas. En concreto, en cuanto a recurso didáctico que puede ser empleado en las aulas docentes de educación secundaria y/o superior, con el fin de exponer la crudeza de la realidad de los niños no acompañados que se dirigen a los Estados Unidos y, asimismo, de generar pensamiento crítico y reconocimiento de la realidad de nuestras sociedades contemporáneas.