La comunidad Latina, the fastest growing ethnic group in the United States, has long been told that assimilation is the only way to succeed in American society. This book challenges that generally accepted view and concludes instead that transformation as a way of life is the only viable option for the Latino community as a whole, regardless of racial, class, regional, or religious differences. It highlights how in the everyday life of la comunidad Latina the members of the community can recognize the underlying ways of life, the stories, and the patterns of relationships that cripple them, and how to break with these ways of life, stories, and relationships to create fundamentally more loving and compassionate alternatives. Along with all men and women, Latinos and Latinas face four choices: retaining a blind loyalty to a romanticized past, assimilating, violating each other, or transforming their ethnic and racial group for the better. This examination of the underlying sacred meaning of the stories of the Latino culture attempts to determine whether these stories are destructive or creative. Now coming of age, la comunidad Latina, previously wounded by assimilation, continues to tell its story in art, literature, history, and religion so that the world may, perhaps for the first time, see its personal, political, historical, and sacred faces. The most important story now being lived is that of Latina women and Latino men who are making choices that will determine the ultimate meaning of a new Latino culture in this nation.

This book is a pioneering application of the transformation theory to key aspects of Latino politics, family heritage, community, history, and culture, and religious symbols.

This volume represents the work of the National Latino/a Education Research Agenda Project (NLERAP) It conceptualizes and illustrates the theoretical framework for the NLERAP agenda and its projects.

Working in community is critical to several fields. Working en comunidad focuses on service-learning and Latina/o/e communities within a variety of institutional contexts. It provides a practical framework grounded in theoretical approaches that center Latina/o/e experiences as foundational to understanding how to prepare students to work in the community and en comunidad. The volume tackles three major themes: ethical approaches to working with Latina/o/e communities within language courses and beyond; preparing Latina/o/e students for working with their own communities in different environments; and ensuring equitable practices and building relationships that are mutually beneficial for students and community members. The editors forward two central arguments: (1) Equitable community engagement in higher education is a reflective and reciprocal process that develops empathy and personal and professional growth in students; and (2) service-learning is most transformative when it explicitly guides students and the community to build cultural humility and recognize Latina/o/e experiences and agency as foundational to the learning process. Many of the contributors and editors are Latina/o/e-identified scholars, practitioners, and researchers, who lend a rich body of experience and a personal dedication to this work. They present distinct approaches and geographies, as well as range of institutions, to offer a wide scope of engaged work that builds on the concept of comunidad to advance a critical new conceptual framework of equitable education and racial justice. Contributors Stacey Alex Elena Foulis Christina García Catherine Komisaruk Kelly Lowther Pereira Glenn Martínez María Luisa Parra-Velasco

It is well known that Latinos in the United States bear a disproportionate burden of low educational attainment, high residential segregation, and low visibility in the national political landscape. In Latinos in American Society, Ruth Enid Zambrana brings together the latest research on Latinos in the United States to demonstrate how national origin, age, gender, socioeconomic status, and education affect the well-being of families and individuals. By mapping out how these factors result in economic, social, and political disadvantage, Zambrana challenges the widespread negative perceptions of Latinos in America and the single story of Latinos in the United States as a monolithic group. Synthesizing an increasingly substantial body of social science research—much of it emerging from the interdisciplinary fields of Chicano studies, U.S. Latino studies, critical race studies, and family studies—the author adopts an intersectional "social inequality lens" as a means for understanding the broader sociopolitical dynamics of the Latino family, considering ethnic subgroup diversity, community context, institutional practices, and their intersections with family processes and well-being. Zambrana, a leading expert on Latino populations in America, demonstrates the value of this approach for capturing the contemporary complexity of and transitions within diverse U.S. Latino families and communities. This book offers the most up-to-date portrait we have of Latinos in America today.

The tenth volume in the Recovering the US Hispanic Literary Heritage Series, this collection of essays reflects on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the project’s efforts to locate, identify, preserve and disseminate the literary contributions of US Latinos from the Spanish Colonial Period to contemporary times. Essays by scholars recalling the beginnings of the project cover a wide range of topics: origins, identity, archival research, institutional politics and pedagogy. From recollections about funding to personal reminiscences, the recovery of Jewish Hispanic heritage and the intellectual project of reframing American history and literature, these articles provide a fascinating look at twenty-five years of recovering the written legacy of the Hispanic population in what has become the United States. An additional nineteen scholarly essays speak to specific efforts to recover an extremely diverse Latino literary heritage. Historians and literary critics who research Spanish, English and Sephardic texts examine a broad array of subjects, including colonialism, historical populations, exile and immigration. This far-reaching book is required reading for those studying US Latino history and literature.

Inspiring, heartwarming and humorous, this special story collection celebrates Latino life and community across the country.