:
"Close to Home offers potentially important links to our understanding of the discourse practices of the children from these transnational communities who make up a large proportion of the student enrollment in our schools. A must-read for educators and researchers working with Mexican-origin and other Latino communities."
—María de la Luz Reyes, University of Colorado-Boulder
"Innovative and insightful. . . . Close to Home makes an important contribution to the interdisciplinary study of oral and written discourse."
—René Galindo, University of Colorado at Denver
"I strongly recommend this work . . . significant and timely for the field of language, literacy, and rhetorical studies."
—Jabari Mahiri, University of California at Berkeley
When teachers are familiar with what adults and children bring with them into the classroom, they are far better prepared to develop appropriate curricula and pedagogical techniques. Close to Home is a unique portrayal and analysis of the language, literacy, and cultural resources of a social network of Mexicano adults living in a rural community in Mexico and Chicago’s inner city. By exploring the ways in which this group’s experiences as immigrants have affected their communicative practices, the author provides a basis for understanding how researchers, policy makers, and educators can provide these adults and their children with a relevant education that effectively embraces their schooling and lived experience. After establishing a historical and sociocultural context for the author’s analysis, this rich ethnographic study presents a variety of oral and written sample texts, including tape recordings of everyday oral language use, personal letters, and autobiographical writing.
Juan C. Guerra is an Associate Professor in the Department of English at the University of Washington, Seattle.
