LEADING SCHOLAR TO DISCUSS CULTURAL LITERACY FOR CHILDREN

For immediate release
October 26, 2000

LEADING SCHOLAR TO DISCUSS CULTURAL LITERACY
FOR CHILDREN IN SCHOMBURG-MORENO LECTURE
NOVEMBER 9 AT MOUNT HOLYOKE COLLEGE

SOUTH HADLEY, Massachusetts—Felix M. Padilla, visiting professor of American studies at Yale University and a leading national authority in the fields of Latino politics and education, will deliver the Schomburg-Moreno Lecture Thursday, November 9, in Mary Woolley Hall's New York Room from 4 to 6 PM at Mount Holyoke College. His talk is titled "Cultural Literacy for Children: Implications for Educators, Parents, College Students, and Other Mentors."

Padilla has published widely in the fields of Puerto Rican, Mexican American, and Cuban American relations, the sociology of Latino culture, identity, and music, and Latino/a youth gangs. He is the founder and editor of the Latino Studies Journal, a multidisciplinary publication devoted to the study of contemporary and historic Latino/a life in United States society.

At the age of thirteen, Padilla moved from Puerto Rico to Chicago where he received his higher education, culminating in a Ph.D. in sociology from Northwestern University in 1982. He is the author of five major books on the Latino/a experience in the United States: Latino Ethnic Consciousness (1985); Puerto Rican Chicago (1987); The Gang as an American Enterprise (1992); Outside the Wall: The Struggle of a Puerto Rican Prisoner's Wife (1993); and The Struggle of Latino/Latina University Students in Search of a Liberating Education (1997), which won the 1998 Oliver Cromwell Cox Award of the American Sociological Association for best exemplifying scholarship geared toward anti-racism and social justice in American society.

The Struggle of Latino/Latina University Studentsis a compilation of stories written by students over three semesters in Padilla's Sociology of Latino/a Culture and Identity class. This process of self-rediscovery is at the center of his classroom work in all of his topical offerings. Padilla is also the founder and owner of Libros, Encouraging Cultural Literacy, a publisher of Latino/a multicultural literature for children and young readers. This year, Libros published its first two children's books, Mis Dos Luces (My Two Lights) and Cuentitos de Mami Amor (Mami Amor's Little Stories).

An annual event at Mount Holyoke College, the Schomburg-Moreno Lecture highlights interrelations among Latin American and Caribbean peoples, United States Latinos, and other peoples of the United States.

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