Cultural Reproduction of Ancestral Knowledge in Latiné Young Adult Literature: Examining Speculative Worlds to Illuminate Future Possibilities

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Sunday 11:45 am - Gold 3
  In Roundtable Session: Reclaiming Knowledge, Reimagining Futures: Latiné Youth, Families, and Cultural Pedagogies of Resistance

Abstract

This paper highlights a study featuring a critical content analysis (Short, 2017) of Donna Barba Higuera’s series of speculative young adult (YA) novels, The Last Cuentista and Alebrijes, focused on the cultural reproduction of ancestral knowledge. Employing speculative civic literacies and Latinofuturism frameworks, this study foregrounds how storytelling is used as resistance and ancestral guidance, and how embodied practices like dance are symbolic of ancestral fortitude. This paper also explores pedagogical opportunities of teaching speculative YA texts in secondary education spaces, by enumerating features of the genre by way of guided inquiry. Implications of the study include the heightened time of history to explore collective cultural resiliency to examine imaginings of a future rife with sovereignty steeped in ancestral knowledge.

Author

• Vanessa E. Vega, University of Central Florida