On Becoming Bilingual

Patricia Baquedano-López is an associate professor at the Graduate School of Education and affiliated faculty in Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. She has conducted extensive fieldwork in California and in Yucatán on the linguistic and cultural development of young migrant children and the revalorization of Yucatec Maya in the Yucatan-California Maya diaspora.Paul B. Garrett is an associate professor in the Department of Anthropology at Temple University. He has conducted field-based research in the Caribbean region, focusing on issues of language contact and change, and is currently participating and assisting in community-based efforts to revitalize the Lenape language.

• Table of ContentsList of IllustrationsPrefaceCopyright Acknowledgements1. Introduction: The Social Worlds of Bilingual Children2. A Critical Approach to Language Learning in Social Context3. Becoming A Bilingual Speaker of Culture4. Bilingualism in Schools5. Children’s Participation in Social Activities 6. Becoming Speakers for Others7. Developing a Critical Lens on Children’s Words and WorldsGlossaryIndex

Simultaneously a rigorous account of and a tribute to bilingual children’s agency, knowledge, and creativity, On Becoming Bilingual is a must read for those seeking to understand the complex experiences of children growing up in linguistically diverse environments. Bringing together their experience as researchers of childhood bilingualism in North America and the Caribbean with detailed consideration of contemporary scholarship on bi/multilingualism and immigrant/postcolonial childhoods, Baquedano-López and Garrett offer us a compelling treatise on the social, political, and educational worlds that bilingual children inhabit and help create. Thoughtfully structured for use in graduate and undergraduate seminars, this state-of-the-art volume provides critical tools for discussions of the deficit framings of bilingual children’s skill and knowledge, and of how we can best support them in a dignity-affirming way.Inmaculada Ma García-Sánchez, Associate Professor of Social Research Methodology, School of Education and Information Studies, University of California, Los Angeles