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Tactics of Hope in Latinx Children’s and Young Adult Literature by Jesus Montaño and Regan Postma-Montaño (review)

2023; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 47; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/uni.2023.a924070

1080-6563

Cristina Herrera,

Literacy and Educational Practices

Reviewed by: Tactics of Hope in Latinx Children's and Young Adult Literature by Jesus Montaño and Regan Postma-Montaño Cristina Herrera (bio) Jesus Montaño and Regan Postma-Montaño. Tactics of Hope in Latinx Children's and Young Adult Literature. U of New Mexico P, 2022. Where is the space for hope in our current moment in the United States? In the first years of the 2020s, a period marked by a deadly pandemic, mass shooting after mass shooting, and the ongoing assault on Black lives, among other atrocities, where indeed, does hope reside? And yet, Jesus Montaño and Regan Postma-Montaño's new study does not dwell on the innumerable ways this country strips immigrant, queer, and BIPOC communities of their humanity, even as the authors openly critique the harsh conditions in which our most vulnerable populations inhabit. Tactics of Hope in Latinx Children's and Young Adult Literature—one of only a handful of scholarly texts on the growing, dynamic field of Latinx children's and young adult literature—imagines a liberatory present and future where young people, despite all odds, prevail, fight back, and teach older generations a new way, a better way, of existing and thriving on US soil. In their sweeping introduction, Montaño and Postma-Montaño lay the stakes of their study. Adapting Gloria Anzaldúa's theory of conocimiento, which is a gesture toward the transformative possibilities of healing through activist awakening and reflection, the authors read Latinx children's and YA texts, such as David Bowles's They Call Me Güero: A Border Kid's Poems, Aida Salazar's Land of the Cranes, and Erika Sánchez's I Am Not Your Perfect [End Page 188] Mexican Daughter, among other titles, as projects that trace young people's movement toward a more compassionate and humane reality for themselves and their communities. As the authors proclaim, "Latinx books, we posit, are instrumental in the creation of a more just and equitable world" (8). It is this argument—that literature need not be a medium separate from but intrinsic to activist, humanitarian struggles—that propels their analysis forward, as they engage with literary representations of Latinx youth who come of age in hostile climates that brutalize, harm, and dehumanize their communities. Highlighting Latinx lived experiences, according to the authors, is both celebratory and resistant, a tactic Latinx writers for youth employ in the works investigated in the study. Divided into five chapters, the book engages with a diverse set of texts and genres ranging from novels in verse, illustrated children's books, to traditional first-person texts that represent young Latinxs as change makers, activists, and artists to challenge longstanding ideologies that refuse to see youth as leaders. For example, in chapter 1, "Reading for Conocimiento in Farmworker Kid Lit: Roots of Transformation and Activism," the authors discuss the two well-known picture books, Side by Sides/Lado a Lado: The Story of Dolores Huerta and Cesar Chavez/La historia de Dolores Huerta y César Chávez and Tomás and the Library Lady alongside the bildungsroman, Under the Feet of Jesus, which draw attention to the exploitative working conditions in which migrant farmworkers toil. This chapter is especially salient, given that the agricultural sector remains one of the industries that continues to rely on young laborers, many of whom are undocumented and Latinx, with few protections afforded them. In particular, Montaño and Postma-Montaño's attention to Viramontes's novel in a book about children's and YA literature is crucial; despite the breadth of critical attention on this classic text, seldom have scholars examined it through a lens that centers youth as a significant frame of analysis to chart the protagonist Estrella's Chicana activist, working-class awakening. One of the many strengths of this book rests with the authors' deliberate insertion of personal recollections/testimonios alongside their analysis of Latinx youth literature. Utilizing a multidisciplinary approach of Latinx Critical Theory (LatCrit), Educational Studies, and Ethnic Studies, seen especially in chapter 4, "Kids' Agency and Empowerment in an Era of Family Deportation," they pair two YA novels (Efrén Divided by...