The Mexican American Community College Experience addresses the challenge ofeducating Mexican American students, the largest segment of the growing Latino population, in community colleges, the largest institutions in today’s landscape of higher education. It describes the cultivation of resilience in these students and how engaging, dynamic faculty help them succeed in their studies. This blending of psychology and education theory, with a critical twist, shows how faculty help students develop a foundation of resilience and a larger sense of purpose based on their unique knowledge, pedagogies, and culture, an area not traditionally addressed in curriculum and instruction. Creative teaching, resilience, and energetic student stories make this a celebration of Mexican American success at a major regional community college on the U.S – Mexico border.

Based on interview data, life testimonios, and Chicana feminist theories, The Chicana/o/x Dream profiles first-generation, Mexican-descent college students who have overcome adversity by utilizing various forms of cultural capital to power their academic success. While college enrollment rates for Chicana/o/x students have steadily increased over the last decade, this cohort still faces significant barriers to academic achievement, including minimal information about college and limited access to the kind of preparation and advising that will help them get there. As a result, Chicana/o/x students maintain stubbornly low four-year completion rates. Against this backdrop, Gilberto Q. Conchas and Nancy Acevedo address the mechanisms that shape the achievement, aspirations, and expectations of Chicana/o/x students who grew up in marginalized communities and unequal school contexts and share success stories about this growing population of students. Conchas and Acevedo elevate the voices of students at a research university and in the community college sector to reveal important issues and factors impacting and shaping the students' academic journeys. The college-age men and women in the narratives evince hope, resistance, and empowerment in the face of marginalization, anti-immigration sentiment, poverty, and an education system that too often reinforces deficit-minded stereotypes. The authors critique the educational policies and practices that systematically fail to champion Chicana/o/x success and examine the use of community cultural wealth that supports US-born and US immigrant students of Mexican descent to make their achievement possible. In so doing, the authors look toward the future by highlighting the actions that Chicana/o/x students take in creating bridges between K-12 to college and between their communities and higher education. The Chicana/o/x Dream helps define the heart and soul of tomorrow's America and elucidates how Chicana/o/x college students maintain hope, enact resistance, and succeed against injustice. The book offers a call to action to K-20 educators and administrators to develop better supports to foster the success of Mexican-descent students.

Mexican Americans have traditionally had a strong land ethic, believing that humans must respect la tierra because it is the source of la vida. As modern market forces exploit the earth, communities struggle to control their own ecological futures, and several studies have recorded that Mexican Americans are more impacted by environmental injustices than are other national-origin groups. In our countryside, agricultural workers are poisoned by pesticides, while farmers have lost ancestral lands to expropriation. And in our polluted inner cities, toxic wastes sicken children in their very playgrounds and homes. This book addresses the struggle for environmental justice, grassroots democracy, and a sustainable society from a variety of Mexican American perspectives. It draws on the ideas and experiences of people from all walks of life—activists, farmworkers, union organizers, land managers, educators, and many others—who provide a clear overview of the most critical ecological issues facing Mexican-origin people today. The text is organized to first provide a general introduction to ecology, from both scientific and political perspectives. It then presents an environmental history for Mexican-origin people on both sides of the border, showing that the ecologically sustainable Norteño land use practices were eroded by the conquest of El Norte by the United States. It finally offers a critique of the principal schools of American environmentalism and introduces the organizations and struggles of Mexican Americans in contemporary ecological politics. Devon Peña contrasts tenets of radical environmentalism with the ecological beliefs and grassroots struggles of Mexican-origin people, then shows how contemporary environmental justice struggles in Mexican American communities have challenged dominant concepts of environmentalism. Mexican Americans and the Environment is a didactically sound text that introduces students to the conceptual vocabularies of ecology, culture, history, and politics as it tells how competing ideas about nature have helped shape land use and environmental policies. By demonstrating that any consideration of environmental ethics is incomplete without taking into account the experiences of Mexican Americans, it clearly shows students that ecology is more than nature study but embraces social issues of critical importance to their own lives.

On the surface, Mexican Americans and Mexican immigrants to the United States seem to share a common cultural identity but often make uneasy neighbors. Discrimination and assimilationist policies have influenced generations of Mexican Americans so that some now fear that the status they have gained by assimilating into American society will be jeopardized by Spanish-speaking newcomers. Other Mexican Americans, however, adopt a position of group solidarity and work to better the social conditions and educational opportunities of Mexican immigrants. Focusing on the Mexican-origin, working-class city of La Puente in Los Angeles County, California, this book examines Mexican Americans' everyday attitudes toward and interactions with Mexican immigrants—a topic that has so far received little serious study. Using in-depth interviews, participant observations, school board meeting minutes, and other historical documents, Gilda Ochoa investigates how Mexican Americans are negotiating their relationships with immigrants at an interpersonal level in the places where they shop, worship, learn, and raise their families. This research into daily lives highlights the centrality of women in the process of negotiating and building communities and sheds new light on identity formation and group mobilization in the U.S. and on educational issues, especially bilingual education. It also complements previous studies on the impact of immigration on the wages and employment opportunities of Mexican Americans.

In Learning to be Latino, Reyes paints a vivid picture of Latino student life, outlining students' interactions with one another, with non-Latino peers, and with faculty, administrators, and the outside community. Reyes identifies the normative institutional arrangements that shape the social relationships relevant to Latino students' lives on these campuses.

*"This superb anthology of short stories, comics, and poems is fresh, funny, and full of authentic YA voices revealing what it means to be Mexican American . . . Not to be missed."--SLC, starred review *"Superlative . . . A memorable collection." --Booklist, starred review *"Voices reach out from the pages of this anthology . . . It will make a lasting impression on all readers." --SLJ, starred review Twenty stand-alone short stories, essays, poems, and more from celebrated and award-winning authors make up this YA anthology that explores the Mexican American experience. With works by Francisco X. Stork, Guadalupe Garcia McCall, David Bowles, Rubén Degollado, e.E. Charlton-Trujillo, Diana López, Xavier Garza, Trinidad Gonzales, Alex Temblador, Aida Salazar, Guadalupe Ruiz-Flores, Sylvia Sánchez Garza, Dominic Carrillo, Angela Cervantes, Carolyn Dee Flores, René Saldaña Jr., Justine Narro, Daniel García Ordáz, and Anna Meriano. In this mixed-media collection of short stories, personal essays, poetry, and comics, this celebrated group of authors share the borders they have crossed, the struggles they have pushed through, and the two cultures they continue to navigate as Mexican Americans. Living Beyond Borders is at once an eye-opening, heart-wrenching, and hopeful love letter from the Mexican American community to today's young readers. A powerful exploration of what it means to be Mexican American.

Drawing on both extensive demographic data and compelling case studies, this book reveals the depths of the educational crisis looming for Latino students, the nation's largest and most rapidly growing minority group.