This article examines the recent tradition of decorating and re-fashioning graduation caps, also known as mortarboards, by Chicanx/Latinx graduates. We describe this practice as StoryBoarding, a form of micro-storytelling tales of Chicana/Latina agency and resistance that counter, expose, and challenge institutionalized forms of racism. Many…

In mainstream American culture, death is not usually talked about openly. It is discussed privately among adults because death is often regarded as a final ending. Nevertheless, many elementary school teachers discuss el Dia de los Muertos with their students. The celebration of el Dia de los Muertos, in contrast to dominant ideology, commemorates…

This article looks closely at how the process of artmaking linked to social critique unfolds in one community-based educational setting in Latin America. Drawing on nine months of ethnographic fieldwork with a community-based popular education organization in the northern desert of Mexico, the article examines the pedagogical uses of poetry,…

Francisco Rojas Gonzalez's 1944 novel "La negra Angustias" is recognized as the only novel of the Mexican Revolution that features a black woman military officer. Critics have observed that, although this semi-biographical novel portrays Angustias as a gender nonconformist who seeks justice for women and the poor, the conclusion ushers…

In 1992, more than 20 artists showcased their work in a traveling exhibit, "Chicano Codex: Encountering Art of the Americas." Each piece creatively resembled Mesoamerican amoxtli, the pictographic "codex books" that were destroyed by European combatants as a strategy for subjugating indigenous minds. Spain's campaign of…

From August 2006 through August 2007, Elvira Arellano, an undocumented Mexican immigrant, lived in a church on Chicago's West Side with her U.S.-born 7-year-old son, Saul, to avoid a deportation order. Her plight played out in Chicago-area and national media, piggybacking on a nationwide debate on immigration. This study focuses on one piece of…

The 5th International Conference on Language, Literature and Culture has been hosted by Mehmet Akif Ersoy University (Burdur, Turkey), in cooperation with Çankaya University (Ankara, Turkey) and Süleyman Demirel University (Isparta, Turkey). Our main aim has been to provide a forum for discussion, to facilitate integration in these fields, and to…

This article presents a rhetorical analysis of a Mexican woman's oral narrative performance using a discourse studies and interactional sociolinguistics framework. The results of the analysis suggest that the discursive practice of the oral narrative and that of academic discourse share certain rhetorical features. These features are (a) the…

"The Line Between Us" explores the history of U.S-Mexican relations and the roots of Mexican immigration, all in the context of the global economy. And it shows how teachers can help students understand the immigrant experience and the drama of border life. "But The Line Between Us" is about more than Mexican immigration and…