Voices of Resistance

These pages, these warrior voices, these fervent words, sing to my heart songs of progress—songs of hope! I cannot emphasize too much how necessary, how relevant, how timely, this book is to educators seeking to inform themselves in regards to important developments in Chicano children’s literature. Take this book, open it, and let the melody of these voces lindas carry you home. -- Guadalupe Garcia McCall, Pura Belpré award winner
Voices of Resistance is at once a profoundly literary, educational, and sociopolitical accomplishment, as it pushes on conventional notions of how one engages Chican@ literature toward transformative ends. Blending the pedagogical with literary and cultural tropes, deeply historical and intellectual roots, and a complex array of sociocultural experiences, and Chican@ cultural sensibilities and practices, Voices illustrates how Chican@ literature is neither monolithic, nor is the community to which it speaks most directly. Instead, the collection of essays vividly captures complexity in the expansive linguistic and sociocultural practices of Chican@ communities, offering literature as a way for youth to become historical actors. -- Kris Gutierrez, Carol Liu professor University of California, Berkeley
A book like this is woefully long overdue. It unapologetically centers Chican@ children’s and young adult literature into a highly readable tome that pushes the discursive boundaries related to sex, race, class, linguistic, and gendered systems of inequality in children’s and young adult Chica@ literature. In a world of fake news, this compelling volume makes us mindful of the national myths, lies, and deficit perspectives that belie such falsities as solely a 21st century problem. As the wonderful contributions to this volume powerfully imply by example, the regular curricular diet of test-focused, culturally chauvinistic school curricula to which our children and youth are regularly, if tragically, subjected, is robbing the Chican@ community of voice, presence, and power in our nation’s classrooms. Hence, this path breaking text helps lay the ground work for the very liberation and uplift that all of our youth and communities so desperately need. Kudos for a job well done! -- Angela Valenzuela, professor, department of educational administration, University of Texas at Austin; director, University of Texas Center for Education Policy