Readings for this week, (which will be presented on next week):

Border-Crossing:  Language and Identities

Lam, W. S. E. (2004). Border discourses and identities in transnational youth culture. In Jabari Mahiri (Ed.) What they don’t learn in school: Literacy in the lives of urban youth. (pp. 79-97). Peter Lang: NY. 

This book chapter explores how Chinese immigrant teenagers create transnational/global cultural and social relationships, based on their reading of Japanese, Chinese, and American comic books.

Pratt, Mary Louise. (1999). Arts of the contact zone.  In D. Bartholomae & A. Petrosky (Eds.), Ways of Reading, 5th edition. New York: Bedford/St. Martin's Press.

Pratt introduces us the term “contact zone”, which she explains as “social spaces where cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in contexts of highly asymmetrical relations of power.” She illustrates the term “autoethnography,” a tactic by which people who have been relegated to marginalized positions of powerlessness seek to regain their agentive voice.  Autoethnography is one example of what she calls “literate arts of the contact zone.”

Anzaldua, G. (1987). How to tame a wild tongue. In Borderlands/La Frontera: The new mestiza (pp. 53-64). San Francisco: Spinsters/Aunt Lute.

This essay describes Anzaldua's experience as a bilingual/biliterate/bicultural woman living along the Texas/Mexico border, attempting to negotiate a number of boundaries that separate languages, peoples, and ideas.

Rodriguez, R. (1981). The achievement of desire. In Hunger of memory: The education of Richard Rodriguez, An autobiography. (pp. 43-73). Boston: D.R. Godine.

In this chapter, Rodriguez describes his education, and his resulting feeling of alienation from his family.

Bragg, R. (1998). Excerpts from All over but the shoutin’. New York:  Pantheon.

These excerpts are from a Pulitzer Prize winning author’s autobiography about growing up White and poor in Alabama.

Rose, M. (1989). “I just wanna be average.” In Lives on the boundary: An account of the struggles and achievements of America's educationally under-prepared (pp. 11-37). New York: Penguin.

Rose writes an evocative account of his years in the “voc ed” track, reflecting on his own school experiences in light of public discussions of education and the underrepresented student.

Literacy autobiographies by former 140AC students (please read 3 or more):

Aldabe, Lisa Marie.  (2006). Growing into literacy:  A college student reads and writes

Anonymous (2007). A Primary Reflection on the Role of Literacy in My Life

Bang, Katie. (2006). The end of education.

Chou, Justin. (2006). Techno-social literacy.

Ji, Fei.  (2006). White.

Jang, Taryn. (2006).  Beyond the notes.

Nakagawa, Jenna. (2006).  Then what are you doing in America?

Identity & Schooling

Howard, G.R. (2006). We can’t teach what we don’t know: white teachers, multiracial schools (pp.13-27; 53-67).Teachers College Press. New York and London.

In the first chapter of this powerful book, veteran educator, Gary Howard, writes of his coming to terms with his whiteness, and all that it entails, while living in a poor, predominately African American neighborhood during both the Civil Rights movement and its reluctant progeny, the Black Power Movement. Later, in the third chapter of this book, he systematically deconstructs what he refers to as the “dominance paradigm” employed by whiteness.

Olsen, L. (1997).  We make each other racial: The Madison High world as perceived by the “American” student.  In Made in America (pp. 58-89).  New York: The New Press.

This chapter presents high school students views on how race factors into their social experience.