Gendered Identities and Immigrant Language Learning

Humorous and irreverent, embarrassed and frustrated, angry and grateful, the participants in Menard-Warwick’s study emerge as real people on the pages of this engaging and compassionate book that privileges immigrants’ voices and experiences. Investigating the complex interplay between gender, class, ethnicity, and immigration status, Menard-Warwick revitalizes the inquiry into the relationship between gender, power, and second language and literacy learning and makes important connections between sociolinguistic theory and adult ESL teaching practice. 

-- Aneta Pavlenko, College of Education, Temple University, USA

The monograph makes an important contribution to understanding adult immigrant learners' agency and heterogeneity in the restructuring of their gendered identities and their decisions on their education in early 21st century California. First, this research fills in the gaps in second language acquisition research which largely overlooks learners' identities, goals, trajectories and larger contexts of learning. Second, the study contributes in important ways to the language socialisation paradigm since it documents how the personal and family history of adult learners constitutes an important part of the social context of any educational endeavour. Besides, it questions previous findings about the divergence of immigrant children's socialisation from mainstream socialisation at schools. Last but not least, it accounts for the diverse gendered practices and ideologies within the transnational communities of practice in which informants participate through an analysis of the ESL classroom and home literacy practices.

-- Maria Rosa Garrido, Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, Spain * Spanish in Context 9:2, 20