The aim of this article is to make visible many ways in which a group of parents of marginalized status participate in their children's schooling and to reveal something of the societal machinery that can render invisible many admirable parental efforts. Adapting somewhat the analysis of Graue et al. (2001), the author outlines strands within the literature on parent involvement. This article is based on a larger, three-year ethnographic study that examined literacy practices and school involvement among a group of Mexican immigrant mothers at a Silicon Valley, California elementary school. The focus here is on parental involvement practices, with attention given to parental practices with literacy as a particular form of parental involvement. The methodology design for this study was based on the already noted assumption that people's cultural and historical trajectories, along with their current social milieu, influence their ways of understanding and reacting to the world around them. The author discusses the linkages between the mothers' childhood experiences with schooling and literacy in their native Mexico and their patterns of parent involvement with literacy and schooling in the U.S. (Contains 5 tables and 2 notes.)