Publishing in the Margins: A Transnational Investigation of Arts-Rich Bookmaking for Multilingual Literacy Development
In November this year, Julie and I travelled to San Marcos, Texas to meet and participate in a knowledge exchange with Professor Jesse Gainer. This trip was funded by the Dyason Fellowship to support the development of international research collaborations. Our shared focus with Professor Gainer on bookmaking with marginalised children and communities prompted this connection. During our time in San Marcos, Julie and I were honoured to be able to attend the Tomás Rivera Mexican American Children’s Book Awards hosted by the College of Education at Texas State University. Nancy Valdez-Gainer, Jesse’s wife and fellow academic at TSU is the organiser of the awards and generously invited us to attend during our time at TSU.
As the award’s official website explains:
‘Texas State University College of Education developed the Tomás Rivera Mexican American Children’s Book Award to honor authors and illustrators who create literature that depicts the Mexican American experience. The award was established in 1995 and was named in honor of Dr. Tomás Rivera, a distinguished alumnus of Texas State University.’
Learn more about the award here:https://www.education.txst.edu/ci/riverabookaward/about.html
Over three days we had the opportunity to meet with the authors and illustrators of the three winning books, the picture book, ‘Spanish is the Language of My Family’ written by Michael Genhart and illustrated by John Parra, the graphic novel ‘Mexikid: A Graphic Memoir’ written and illustrated by Pedro Martin, and verse novel ‘Warrior Girl’ written by Carmen Tafolla. We had the chance to hear the authors speak to multiple audiences and to speak with them one on one about their books. One of the most impactful elements of the awards was the authors’ presentation to a lecture theatre full of hundreds of students from local elementary schools who had read the books and proudly stepped onto the stage to introduce the authors and present their own responses to the books. The authors received rockstar receptions from the audience of children as they shared their motivations for writing stories that highlight the Mexican American experience and celebrate bilingualism while often addressing important and challenging themes around racism and language suppression. Julie and I were inspired by seeing the impact these authors and their stories were clearly making on the children who attended, seeing their language and culture celebrated in these award-winning books. The authors also made individual school visits, working intensively with smaller groups of children, finding opportunities to have open discussions about the experiences of the characters such as Abuela, in ‘Spanish is the Language of My Family’ who was punished for speaking Spanish at school. Our experience of attending the Tomás Rivera Awards and seeing its significance for the children who attended gave us so much to consider in our own context in Melbourne, Australia with its superdiversity of language and cultural backgrounds. Nancy and Jesse’s passion for celebrating Mexican American children’s literature and encouraging children as authors shone through both the awards and all our conversations with them during our time in Texas.
We had the wonderful opportunity to present our work in the Australian context on Supporting multilingual writers through Arts-Rich Translanguaging Pedagogies. A large and engaged audience of faculty and students from the College of Education attended our presentation and responded with enthusiasm to the practical examples of Arts-Rich Translanguaging Pedagogy we shared. We were able to share the findings from our research in out of school spaces in collaboration with Kids’ Own Publishing and our developing work in exploring the use of ARTP to support writing in the classroom. We were so thrilled when two pre-service teachers came up to us after the presentation to tell us that they felt they really understood what translanguaging can look like in the classroom after listening our presentation.
We also had the wonderful experience of working with a class of Jesse’s preservice teachers, taking them through the process of creating an eight-page book using collage materials in which they drew on their funds of knowledge and identity. The students were deeply immersed in this activity and enthusiastically discussed ways of using this strategy with their future students.
Jesse and Nancy were the most generous of hosts and colleagues. In addition to our time at the Tomás Rivera Awards and presenting at TSU, we were thrilled to have the time to explore Jesse’s extensive library of hand-bound Cartonera books made with children, families and communities from San Marcos to Peru. Through our discussions with Jesse, we learned more about the physical process of creating a Cartonera book which is made using recycled cardboard for the front and back cover which is then illustrated and hand bound. Jesse also explained the way that Cartonera publishing provides access to books in many communities where resources are limited, empowers people from all walks of life as authors and promotes the publishing of diverse stories. Our time in Texas was incredibly rich and reinforced the importance of practices that support ‘publishing in the margins’, the development of writerly identity and practices that support children to bring their full meaning making repertoires to the texts they create in and out of the classroom.
