Domingo de Guzman Cruz Clemente

Chicano children’s literature was born in the wake of the so-called El Movimiento, the Chicano Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and especially the 1970s. In the 1990s, as a part of the rising trend of Multiculturalism and as a cultural product and a reflection of power relations, Chicano children’s literature strove to provide an authentic and accurate representation of Chicano identity. The representation of Mexican-Americans in children’s literature until then had been based on cultural homogeneity, historical distortion, and stereotypes, the distinctive elements which are at the core of the construction of the ‘Other’ and that serve to create and maintain structures of power grounded in fixed identities, opposed binaries and inequalities.In Borderlands / La Frontera. The New Mestiza, Chicana author, Gloria Anzaldúa, rethinks the term ‘identity’, or rather ‘consciousness’, from an inclusive, queer perspective which is not based on opposed dualities. The ideas the author develops in her work on the Mestiza identity echo in her books for children Friends from the Other Side / Amigos del Otro Lado and Prietita and the Ghost Woman / Prietita y La Llorona.Prietita, “little dark one”, is Anzaldúa’s alter ego in her children’s books, her little childself, “tender, open and vulnerable” (Anzaldúa 2000: 63), who signals her mestizo identity: Mexican American and Indian. Anzaldúa’s second bilingual picturebook, Prietita and the Ghost Woman / Prietita y la Llorona, is illustrated by Maya Gonzalez, who portrays Prietita as a young girl of distinctively Mexican features (dark skin and long black hair).As author and illustrator of her bilingual picture books, contemporary Chicana author Maya Gonzalez gives voice and celebrates the self through what she calls ‘the power of reflection’, moving beyond ‘authentic’ or ‘accurate’ representations of Chicano identity.The purpose of this dissertation is to analyse Gonzalez’s picturebooks, starting by focusing on the Nature Trilogy, in which the author highlights our connection to nature (My Colors, My World / Mis colores, mi mundo, I Know the River Loves Me / Yo sé que el río me ama, and Call Me Tree / Llámame árbol), to later explore her most recent projects published by her own independent press, among them The Gender Wheel, “a nature-based, inclusive, body positive story of gender”. I also pay attention to the visual poetry she has created together with Chicano poet Francisco X. Alarcón in a series of picturebooks published between 1997 and 2017.The research questions I address in my study are the following: 1. How has the representation of Chicanx identity in children’s literature reflected ethnic and class power relations throughout Mexican-American history? 2. What elements does Maya Gonzalez make use of visually and verbally for her projects to subvert power relations in terms of aetonormativity, ethnicity and gender? 3. How is contemporary Chicanx children’s literature being received within the United States context? 4. How are educational programs in the US context integrating these picturebooks, if they are doing so? 5. How are Maya Gonzalez’s presentations at seminars and workshops helping bring about social change in Chicanx and non-Chicanx children’s identities? In order to analyse the way(s) in which words and images interact, my focus will be on the dual code, visual and verbal, which is characteristic of picturebooks. I examine the elements Gonzalez makes use of, both as an illustrator and as a writer, to give voice and to represent identity, and how her projects create spaces of inclusiveness and agency, celebrate diversity, and become a source of reflection for all children, Chicanx and non- Chicanx. I frame my study within a critical multicultural approach in order to explore the subversion of power relations in terms of aetonormativity, ethnicity and gender when representing identities in picturebooks for young readers. A critical multicultural analysis of children’s literature (Botelho and Kabakow 2009) allows me to focus on the ideology and power relations at work in children’s literature, so as to bear a critical perspective on Multiculturalism. Although it is not the main purpose of this work, I include two fieldwork studies on the reception of contemporary picturebooks authored by Chicanx authors in order to explore the reception of these works in the US context, both in the publishing industry, and in the educational field, as well as in order to complement the analysis of the representations of Chicanx identity through word and image.

La institución universitaria se ha caracterizado habitualmente por un distanciamiento
del mundo real, una tendencia a los compartimentos estancos y una considerable
rigidez. El artículo presenta la política de desarrollo de la dimensión relacional de la
Universidad a través de la figura de coordinación de redes y alianzas. Ésta,
contribuye a un modelo que más allá de los planes de estudio de grado compuestos
por asignaturas aisladas conecta materias, disciplinas, profesiones y necesidades del
territorio a través de una política de cultivo e incremento del capital social de la
institución.
A través de un diagnóstico de las conexiones internas y externas se diseña un plan
de acción. Éste se rige por el principio de responsabilidad social de la Universidad y
establece una estrategia a corto, medio y largo plazo en relación con la dimensión
interna y externa de los estudios. Esta estrategia se monitoriza a través de la Unidad
operativa de redes y alianzas que supervisa, apoya y centraliza la gestión de las
distintas acciones entre las que hay retos interdisciplinarios intergrados, APS con el
territorio o el desarrollo de un Proyecto Magnet. Son algunos de los ejemplos que
vertebran esta línea estratégica que busca convertir la facultad en un hub educativo
comunitario de mirada 360o.
Palabras clave: Redes, alianzas, conexiones, ecosistema educativo, institución
universitaria.

The book Multilingualism, Translation and Language Teaching, The PluriTAV Projec, edited by Juan José
Martínez Sierra stems from the PluriTav Project funded by the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación and led by researchers at the Universitat de València, Universitat Jaume I, University College London, and the University of Roehampton. The book is divided into 13 chapters within two distinct parts. Part 1 consists of 5 chapters and presents the project rationale, the research and teaching context in which it emerged, its findings, and learning and teaching materials created by project members. Part 2 comprises 8 chapters, each of them featuring a research paper amongst the papers presented at the PluriTAV International Conference Multilingualism, Translation, and Language Teaching, which was held in Valencia, Spain, in 2019. The book is prefaced by an introductory chapter written by the editor and concludes with some final remarks.
Before reviewing each individual chapter, it is worth highlighting the aspects that make this book a very valuable contribution bringing together fields that interact in practice but usually tend to be explored and considered in isolation. Firstly, it explores and embraces with a critical eye the changing understanding of languages and languaging, as we speak. Secondly, it repeatedly tackles the tension between political agendas, societal assumptions and beliefs around language acquisition, language learning and language teaching, many of which stem from a monolingual norm. This book presents a project and related research bringing together translation in its most widespread form nowadays, i.e., AVT, and language learning. This task on its own is already a big endeavour, mostly for the pervading assumptions around the types of materials and activities that constitute ‘proper’ educational materials, and for the pervading monolingual and bilingual views around language learning and teaching, as well as around the notions of translation and interpreting. Nevertheless, the challenging task was tackled thanks to the capability and knowledge of the principal investigator and the creation of an excellent
team.