A Beautiful "Gray" and "Dirty" City: San Diego, Retold for Young Readers

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session 8
  In Roundtable Session: Critical Analyses of Community, Memory, and Cultural Representation in Children's and Young Adult Literature

Abstract

Framed by San Diego Grand Slam Poetry Champion Rudy Francisco's "My City," the authors engage in critical content analysis of "brochure"-like San Diego stories and picture books that center the lives and experiences of San Diego communities of color, such as F. Isabel Campoy and Theresa Howell's (2016) MAYBE SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL: HOW ART TRANSFORMED A NEIGHBORHOOD and Beatrice Zamora's (2020) THE SPIRIT OF CHICANO PARK/ EL ESPIRITU DEL PARQUE CHICANO to determine whose lives are celebrated/valued in children's literature set in this popular Southern California city. We argue that picture books that center Black, Latinx, and other young people of color can powerfully retell dominant, problematic narratives that exclude them from the stories of their own cities and home places.

Authors

• Katherine M. Sciurba, San Diego State University

• Kiedra Taylor

• Paula Bernal