In this book, Rodriguez uses theories of critical literacy and culturally responsive teaching to argue that our schools, and our culture, need sustaining and inclusive young adult (YA) literature/s to meet the needs of culturally and linguistically diverse readers and all students. This book provides an outline for the study of literature through cultural and literary criticism, via essays that analyze selected YA literature (drama, fiction, nonfiction, and poetry) in four areas: scribal identities and the self-affirmation of adolescents; gender and sexualities; schooling and education of young adult characters; and teachers' roles and influences in characters' coming of age. Applying critical literacy theories and a youth studies lens, this book shines a light on the need for culturally sustaining and inclusive pedagogies to read adolescent worlds. Complementing these essays are critical conversations with seven key contemporary YA literature writers, adding biographical perspectives to further expand the critical scholarship and merits of YA literature.

Through an innovative approach of critical ethnography and literacy research via case-study methodologies, Enacting Adolescent Literacies across Communities: Latino/a Scribes and Their Rites analyzes Latino/a adolescents' engagement with the elements of literacy for English language arts learning and understanding. How young people enact literacies in their bicultural lives and understand literary traditions today reveals their own interests in democracy, equity, and opportunity. Moreover, the rites they perform often recover buried histories, mirrors, and stories similar to the pre-Columbian scribes whose intellectual legacy is relevant in the twenty-first century. R. Joseph Rodriguez illustrates how adolescents experience scribal identities and language pluralism that sustains their cultural knowledge as they make meaning and enact literacies with diverse audiences in civic and schooling communities.

In this book, Rodriguez uses theories of critical literacy and culturally responsive teaching to argue that our schools, and our culture, need sustaining and inclusive young adult (YA) literature/s to meet the needs of culturally and linguistically diverse readers and all students. This book provides an outline for the study of literature through cultural and literary criticism, via essays that analyze selected YA literature (drama, fiction, nonfiction, and poetry) in four areas: scribal identities and the self-affirmation of adolescents; gender and sexualities; schooling and education of young adult characters; and teachers' roles and influences in characters' coming of age. Applying critical literacy theories and a youth studies lens, this book shines a light on the need for culturally sustaining and inclusive pedagogies to read adolescent worlds. Complementing these essays are critical conversations with seven key contemporary YA literature writers, adding biographical perspectives to further expand the critical scholarship and merits of YA literature.

Through an innovative approach of critical ethnography and literacy research via case-study methodologies, Enacting Adolescent Literacies across Communities: Latino/a Scribes and Their Rites analyzes Latino/a adolescents' engagement with the elements of literacy for English language arts learning and understanding. How young people enact literacies in their bicultural lives and understand literary traditions today reveals their own interests in democracy, equity, and opportunity. Moreover, the rites they perform often recover buried histories, mirrors, and stories similar to the pre-Columbian scribes whose intellectual legacy is relevant in the twenty-first century. R. Joseph Rodriguez illustrates how adolescents experience scribal identities and language pluralism that sustains their cultural knowledge as they make meaning and enact literacies with diverse audiences in civic and schooling communities.

SUBSTANCE OF FIRE: GENDER AND RACE IN THE COLLEGE CLASSROOM brings readers inside the four-year college experience, unfolding multiple perspectives and voices. This multi-genre book, written by college professor Claire Millikin, explores how race and gender function within the privilege of the four-year college classroom. Additional contributions are from recent graduates and current faculty, who interrogate the forces of sexism and racism from the various perspectives of gay, straight, biracial, white, African American, and Latino writers and artists. How does being a female professor differ from being a male professor? How does being a lesbian student make a difference in terms of accessing a professor's time, attention, and respect? How does having dark skin or a non-Anglo last name impact a student's freedom to pursue different majors? These and more questions are examined in THE SUBSTANCE OF FIRE. As the title suggests, race and gender are not topics "under control" in higher education but instead they are flash points, tinder, waiting just under the surface of our culture that still makes the claim of equal access to higher education even as so many lives testify to the incompleteness of this so-called equality. Gender and race can ignite, causing pain in the college setting. This book goes to the place of that fire.