RRQ-HS ELL-Rubinstein-Avila - Teachers College Columbia ...

Reading Research Quarterly
Vol. 42, No. 4
October/November/December 2007
© 2007 International Reading Association
(pp. 568–589)
doi:10.1598/RRQ.42.4.6
From the Dominican Republic
to Drew High: What counts as
literacy for Yanira Lara?
ELIANE RUBINSTEIN-ÁVILA
University of Arizona, Tucson, USA
I
nformed by a broad range of epistemic stances, academics across several fields have
questioned what counts as knowledge, as learning, as research, and as data. In fact,
the field of reading, which traditionally focused on formal education, has broadened
its focus beyond school walls and is currently better known as the field of literacy
research. Led by educational ethnographers and anthropologists, the broader
exploration into language and literacy illuminated an array of uses across overlooked
nondominant children, youth, and communities in an array of contexts in
and out of school (Boyarin, 1993; Camitta, 1993; Gilmore, 1983; Heath, 1983;
Willett, 1995).
More recently, several literacy scholars, aligned with what was termed the
new literacy studies (Street, 2003), began to focus on the power relations surrounding
what counts as literacy, and whose literacy counts (e.g., Alvermann, 1999;
Alvermann, Hinchman, Moore, Phelps, & Waff, 2006; Alvermann, Young, Green,
& Wisenbaker, 1999, Gallego & Hollingsworth, 2000, Moje, 2000). Many, including
Harkalu (2001), have argued for the “need to expand current notions of
learning context...beyond the confines of the classroom” (p. 64). In addition, the
shift of literacy research from a cognitive orientation to a more social orientation
(Rogers, Purcell-Gates, Mahiri, & Bloome, 2000) is especially relevant in our era of
globalization, which is an era marked by the unprecedented, rapid, and continuous
emergence of new information and communication technologies, global markets,
knowledge-intensive economies that demand more formal education than ever before,
and massive global displacement (Suárez-Orozco, 2001).
One of the many consequences of such formations has been the shift in student
population. On the basis of 2004 data from the National Center for
Education Statistics, August (2006) concluded that “Spanish speakers are by far the
largest group of language-minority students” in the United States (p. 43). In fact,
568

THIS INVESTIGATION focuses on the literacy practices of a young Dominican immigrant woman attending a
high school in the United States. Drawing from multiple bodies of research and the qualitative research genre of portraiture,
the author relies on ethnographic classroom observations and interviews during one and a half years to provide
a nuanced glimpse into the complexities of what counts as literacy and whose literacies count in an era of
globalization. Findings reveal that immigrant youths’ expanding literacy practices shape and are shaped by their participation
both in their communities of origin and in their adopted communities as they forge overlapping identities.
This investigation shows that helping immigrant youths understand what counts as literacy within new contexts
is a complex process that needs to take into account youths’ nonlinear development of bilingual competencies,
their coming of age, and their shifting ethnic and gendered identities. Findings also underscore the need to broaden
theoretical and methodological constructs to build on immigrant youths’ full repertoire of literacy practices.
Finally, the portrait encourages educators to rethink how to effectively serve secondary Latino/a students in ways
that acknowledge their funds of knowledge, academic strengths, needs, and transnational literacy practices.
ESTA INVESTIGACIÓN se ocupa de las prácticas de alfabetización de una joven inmigrante dominicana que
asiste a una escuela media en los Estados Unidos. Abrevando en distintas fuentes de conocimiento y en cierto género
de investigación cualitativa (“portraiture”), el autor se basa en observaciones etnográficas en el aula y entrevistas
durante un año y medio. El propósito es dar una mirada sutil a la complejidad de los significados y los agentes de
la alfabetización en la era de la globalización. Los hallazgos revelan que las prácticas de alfabetización en expansión
de los jóvenes inmigrantes modelan y son modeladas por su participación, tanto en las comunidades de origen como
en las comunidades de adopción, mientras se construyen identidades superpuestas. Esta investigación muestra que
ayudar a los jóvenes inmigrantes a comprender el significado de la alfabetización en contextos nuevos es un proceso
complejo que requiere la consideración del desarrollo no lineal de las competencias bilingües de los jóvenes, la entrada
en la adultez y las identidades étnicas y de género. Los resultados también subrayan la necesidad de ampliar
los constructos teóricos y metodológicos para desarrollar en los jóvenes el repertorio completo de sus prácticas de
alfabetización. Por último, el cuadro incentiva a los educadores a repensar cómo apoyar eficazmente a los estudiantes
secundarios latinos de manera que se tomen en cuenta sus conocimientos de base, capacidades académicas, necesidades
y prácticas de alfabetización transnacionales.
DIESE UNTERSUCHUNG konzentriert sich auf die Schreib- und Lesehandhabungen einer aus der
Dominikanischen Republik eingewanderten jungen Frau, die eine High School in den Vereinigten Staaten besucht.
Ableitend von vielfältigen Forschungsquellen und dem qualitativen Forschungsgenre als Portraiture, verläßt sich der
Autor auf ethnografische Klassenraumbeobachtungen und Interviews über anderthalb Jahre, um einen nuancierten
Einblick in jene Komplexität zu geben, die als wesentlich beim Schreiben und Lesen gilt und wessen Schreib- und
Leseeigenschaften im Zeitalter der Globalisierung zählen. Aufdeckungen zeigen an, dass die umgreifenden Schreibund
Lesepraktiken bei eingewanderten Jugendlichen sich formen und von ihnen geformt werden, durch ihre
Partizipation in beiden, ihrer originären Gemeinschaften und ihrer adoptierten Gemeinschaften, indem diese sich
zu überschneidenden Identitäten verschmelzen. Diese Untersuchung zeigt, dass die Bemühungen den eingewanderten
Jugendlichen verständlich zu machen was beim Lesen und Schreiben innerhalb neuer Kontexte von
Wichtigkeit ist, ein überaus komplexer Prozess ist, der die nicht linear verlaufende Entwicklung bilingualer
Sprachkompetenzen in Rechnung stellen muß, als auch ihr Heranwachsen und ihr Wandel ethnischer und
geschlechtlicher Identitäten. Die Ergebnisse unterstreichen die Notwendigkeit, theoretische und methodologische
Bindungen zu erweitern, um auf dem vollen Repertoir an Schreib- und Lesepraktiken der jugendlichen Einwanderer
aufzubauen. Letztlich ermutigt das Porträt die Lehrer zum Überdenken, wie man effektiver den Latino/a Schülern
der Sekundaroberstufe auf eine Weise helfen kann, die ihrem Wissenskapital, ihren akademischen Stärken,
Bedürfnissen und transnationalen Schreib- und Lesepraktiken Rechnung tragen.
569
ABSTRACTS
From the
Dominican
Republic to Drew
High: What counts
as literacy for
Yanira Lara?
De la República
Dominicana a
Drew High:
¿Qué significa
alfabetización
para Yanira Lara?
Von der
Dominikanischen
Republik zur Drew
High: Was zählt
beim Schreiben
und Lesen für
Yanira Lara?

ABSTRACTS
De la République
dominicaine à
Drew High :
qu’est-ce que le
lettrisme pour
Yanira Lara ?
Из
Доминиканской
Республики в
выпускники
школы в штате
Миссисипи, или
Что такое
грамотность для
Джаниры Лары?
CETTE RECHERCHE est centrée sur les pratiques de lettrisme d’une jeune immigrante dominicaine fréquentant
un lycée aux Etats-Unis. Partant d’une multiplicité de contextes de recherche et de recherches qualitatives sur
le genre du portrait, l’auteur exploite des observations enthnographiques faites en classe et des entretiens réalisés pendant
un an et demi qui conduisent à une image nuancée de la complexité de ce qui peut être considéré comme lettrisme,
et des lettrismes qui peuvent être considérés en ces temps de globalisation. Les résultats montrent que les pratiques
de lettrisme qui se développent chez de jeunes immigrants façonnnent et sont façonnées par ce qu’ils vivent
à la fois dans leur communauté d’origine et dans leur communauté d’adoption tandis qu’ils forgent leurs identités
croisées. La recherche montre qu’aider les jeunes immigrants à comprendre ce qui peut être considéré comme lettrisme
dans de nouveaux contextes est un processus complexe qui nécessite de prendre en compte le développement
non linéaire des compétences bilingues de ces jeunes, le fait que leur âge change, et les transformations qui se
produisent dans leurs identités ethniques et de genre. Les résultats mettent aussi en évidence la nécessité d’élargir nos
conceptions théoriques et méthodologiques afin de disposer d’un répertoire exhaustif des pratiques de lettrisme
des jeunes immigrants. Ce portrait enfin incite les enseignants à repenser leur façon de travailler efficacement avec
des lycéeens latinos, de telle sorte que soient reconnus leurs connaissances de base, leurs points forts académiques,
leurs besoins, et les pratiques de lettrisme qui dépassent les frontières nationales.
Данная работа является качественным “портретным исследованием” и
посвящена практике общения со словом юной иммигрантки из
Доминиканской республики, которой довелось заканчивать среднюю школу
в Соединенных Штатах. На основе ранее предпринятых многочисленных
исследований автор в течение полутора лет проводил этнографические
наблюдения на уроках и брал интервью, получив в результате многомерное
и многогранное отображение сложного понятия грамотности и ответ на
вопрос: какие виды грамотности являются действительно значимыми в эру
глобализации. Результаты показывают, что расширение понятия
грамотности, которое имеет место в иммигрантской молодежной среде,
происходит (вместе с формированием нескольких ипостасей одной
личности) под одновременным влиянием домашних национальнокультурных
сообществ и новых кругов общения молодежи. Исследование
подтверждает, что молодым иммигрантам необходима помощь, чтобы они
осознали, что принято считаеть грамотностью в новых контекстах их жизни.
Но оказать такую помощь непросто, поскольку необходимо учитывать все
нюансы, всю нелинейность развития молодых людей: сложности
становления навыков двуязычности, переходный возраст, еще нестойкую
этническую и гендерную идентичность. Полученные результаты также
подчеркивают потребность расширения теоретической и методологической
базы с учетом полного набора видов и навыков грамотности, практикуемых
в среде молодых иммигрантов. Наконец, исследование-портрет побуждает
педагогов заново обдумать, как эффективно работать с латиноамериканцамистаршеклассниками,
основываясь на имеющихся у них знаниях, учебных
умениях и потребностях, а также на способах общения со словом, которые
стоят над культурными и национальными различиями.
570

From the Dominican Republic to Drew High: What counts as literacy for Yanira Lara? 571
first- and second-generation Latino/a youth are currently
the fastest growing segment of the U.S. population
(Suárez-Orozco & Suárez-Orozco, 2001).
These students’ success in a knowledge-intense economy,
and the pursuit of their own version of the
“American dream,” will depend on their development
of academic competencies and the repertoire of
practices that count in institutions of higher education.
However, as Gunderson (2004) bluntly put it,
immigrant students are “almost assured” to fail given
“the vast differences that exist between their
needs...and the teaching and learning going on in
schools” (p. 1). Thus, the miseducation of Latino/a
students is an issue of social justice as well as an issue
of far-reaching social and economic consequences
(Rubinstein-Ávila, 2006).
Another consequence of our global era is that
immigrant youth, Dominicans in particular (Louie,
2006), are increasingly likely to live in a complex
transnational space. This space does not rely solely
on back-and-forth movement between the youths’ or
their parents’ country of origin and the United
States; it may be a symbolic space. Also, political,
technological, and economic factors of global proportions
have facilitated the spread of transnational
practices (see Levitt & Waters, 2002). These practices
include, for example, movement of capital
through remittances, goods, and services between
the United States and the Dominican Republic, providing
Dominicans both “material and symbolic advantages”
(Louie, 2006, p. 365). One particular
characteristic of living in a transnational space, even
among second-generation youth, is a reliance on a
“dual frame of reference” for guidance; that is, a
“worldview [that] is organized around comparing
experiences and opportunities in the two settings”—
the homeland and the adoptive community (Suárez-
Orozco & Suárez-Orozco, 2001, p. 114). In fact,
among some groups, contemporary transnationalism
is often symbolic, dynamic, nonlinear, and tends to
ebb and flow “according to [one’s] life course”
(Louie, p. 367).
The transnational space is complex and conflicted;
it is characterized by disruption of traditional
social orders, maintenance of the heritage language
and cultural practices, incorporation of new values,
and linguistic and cultural practices of the adoptive
community, some of which may contradict the
norms of the home community. Scholars who examine
the adaptation of contemporary immigrant
youth have found that those who develop additive
and culturally bilingual competencies and successfully
negotiate transnational identities fare better than
those who assimilate (Bankston & Zhou, 1995;
Feliciano, 2001; Suárez-Orozco & Suárez-Orozco,
2001). In fact, rapid assimilation among new immigrant
youth, often characterized by disassociation
from home language, familial authority, and cultural
ties, has been associated with dysfunctional patterns
of adaptation such as poor school performance, gang
membership, and even delinquency (Suárez-Orozco
& Suárez-Orozco).
In spite of the widespread transnational practices
among particular groups, little is known about
“how this emerging transnationalism may be patterning
these children’s [and youths’] experiences”
(Suárez-Orozco & Suárez-Orozco, 2001, p. 30). Our
knowledge about immigrant students’ prior schooling
experiences, especially secondary students, is limited
(Snow, 2006). We also know little about the
funds of knowledge they bring to school (Moll,
Amanti, Neff, & Gonzalez, 1992), or the role that
the dynamic expansion of their linguistic repertoire
of practices (see Gutiérrez & Rogoff, 2003) plays in
meeting the literacy demands they face in and out of
schools. Nevertheless, Orellana, Reynolds, Dorner,
and Meza’s (2003) and Orellana, Dorner, and
Pulido’s (2003) careful examination of the complex
linguistic and cultural mediations accomplished by
immigrant youth between their families and a wide
range of institutions (medical, legal, educational, financial),
underscore that literacy research, theory,
and practice can glean essential insights from these
youths’ day-to-day literacy experiences.
A survey conducted by Anderson and
Gunderson (2001) of 400 secondary immigrant students
in Canada, most of whom were Asians, was
among the few studies to address assumptions about
reading held by immigrant youth. Their findings revealed
that students’ assumptions were distinctly different
from the assumptions held by their Canadian
teachers and in some ways differed from those held
by their own parents. A broader question that remains
unanswered is how living in a transnational
space affects immigrant students’ literacy practices
and their values, perspectives, beliefs, and actions in
relation to literacy.
The portrait I present in the present investigation
aims to explore the ways in which living in a transnational
space both shapes and is shaped by a young
Dominican woman’s expanding literacy practices. It
delves into the messy intersections between her accounts
of early literacy socialization and her expanding
biliterate repertoire of practices as she tries on new identities
(Neilsen, 1998), while struggling to make sense of
what counts as literacy in a U.S. high school. A broad
theoretical lens was required in order to glean a nuanced
understanding of the ways in which biliteracy

572 Reading Research Quarterly OCTOBER/NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2007 42/4
may interact with processes such as coming of age in a
new environment and developing a transnational identity.
A move beyond what Boyarin (1993) referred to in
his book The Ethnography of Reading and toward the
“new” ethnography of literacy as described by Baynham
(2004) and Street (2004) was also required. In my view,
the new ethnography of literacy ought to encompass
participants’ words, their view of the world, and their
thoughts and stories, whether perceived or imaginary
(Hecht, 2006, 2007). The following research questions
guided my inquiry into what a young Dominican
woman does with literacy (Barton, 1994) and what her
literacy practices do for her:
(a) What counts as literacy for a young Dominican immigrant
woman as she makes the transition into high school
in the United States?
(b) In what ways do her emerging transnational experiences
affect her expanding repertoire of literacy practices?
(c) What role does school play in the development of the
literacy practices that count across institutions of higher education
in an era of globalization?
This investigation’s contributions to the
research literature
The present investigation brings together the
literature on literacy research and the literature on
immigration and education, a relatively new merger
(see Orellana et al., 2003a, 2003b; Rubinstein-Ávila,
2001, 2002, 2004). I argue that inquiry within these
two bodies of research is likely to shed light on our
understanding of the complex terrain of biliteracy
development, its relation to acquiring secondlanguage
competencies, and the role transnational
practices play in such processes. Today, students for
whom English is an additional language (EAL), or
English-language learners (ELLs), as they are more
commonly referred to in the United States, represent
a substantially larger share of the total secondary
school student population than in the past.
Nevertheless, programs that address their particular
needs are more common at the elementary level than
they are in middle and high school (August &
Shanahan, 2006; Ruiz-de-Velasco & Fix, 2000).
In contrast to prior immigration patterns, the
enrollment of EAL students is no longer concentrated
in a handful of states and major cities in which
immigration has been historically ubiquitous.
Latino/a students, many of whom are ELLs, are enrolled
in school districts in states such as North and
South Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama—states with
limited prior experience in serving their educational
needs (Rubinstein-Ávila, 2006). But as this investigation
points out, even schools with sizeable num-
bers of immigrant and EAL students are not necessarily
prepared to meet their academic needs or socialize
students into the repertoire of literacy
practices that count in an era of globalization.
Moreover, despite the correlation found between
reading comprehension in a second language
and reading comprehension in students’ first language,
especially in later grades (Snow, 2006), EAL
students are still routinely assessed for oral proficiency
only in English. In fact, few school districts assess
newcomers’ competencies in reading, writing, speaking,
or content knowledge in the students’ first language.
Also, because credits received in English as a
second language (ESL) high school classes do not
count for credits needed to attend a college or university,
being labeled as ELL for several years is likely to
put Latino/a students at a disadvantage. Latino/a students
are labeled as ELL approximately twice as often
as Asian students (Ruiz-de-Velasco & Fix, 2000).
This investigation’s focus on a young
Dominican woman’s literacies is another contribution
to the literature. Although Dominicans are the
largest new immigrant group in New York City
(Lopez, 1998; Suárez-Orozco & Suárez-Orozco,
2001), few educational studies include Dominican
students in their sample, and fewer focus on the experiences
of Dominicans in U.S. schools. Moreover,
several literacy scholars have argued persuasively that
the construction of gender, identity, and class shape
youths’ access to and experiences with certain literacies
(Finders, 1997; McCarthey & Moje, 2002;
Moje & MuQaribu, 2003). The focus on a young
woman’s literacy practices addresses Moje’s (2002)
contention that inquiry into youths’ literacy practices
has been pervasively male centered, and that, as
a result, the literacy practices of young women have
been often subsumed under a euphemistic youth collective
and consequently overlooked. Thus, a closer
look into the repertoires of literacy practices of a
young, immigrant Dominican woman as she makes
the transition from eighth grade to a high school in
New England is particularly timely and begins to address
these gaps.
Multiple theoretical lenses
In developing a portrait through which to
communicate the intricacies of the simultaneous
process just mentioned, I drew from several theoretical
frameworks and conceptual constructs. These included
(a) the new literacy studies (NLS) perspective
(Street, 2003), which subsumes a critical orientation
to literacy research; (b) the concept of “repertoires of
practice” (Gutiérrez & Rogoff, 2003) and its over-

From the Dominican Republic to Drew High: What counts as literacy for Yanira Lara? 573
lapping funds-of-knowledge construct (Moll et al.,
1992), which builds on Vygotskian sociocultural and
historical theories of learning; and (c) contemporary
immigration and transnational studies (Levitt &
Waters, 2002; Louie, 2006; Suárez-Orozco &
Suárez-Orozco, 2001). Together, these theories provide
a rich context through which to anchor and unpack
the complex circumstances of the life and
literacies of Yanira (pseudonym), the young woman
who is the focus of the present investigation.
Because the theoretical underpinnings of NLS
have gained considerable attention and are not new
to literacy research, I will only remind readers that
this line of inquiry challenges purely cognitive views
of literacy as a set of socially and politically neutral
technical skills to be mastered by individuals and assessed
by what some consider to be objective, scientifically
based research. Instead, the NLS perspective
views literacies as shaped by dynamic interactions
within and across communities, always embedded in
institutional power relations (Street, 2003). As Freire
and Macedo (1987) contended, literacy, and knowledge
in general, are not socially neutral constructs but
are embedded within particular political and economic
systems of power. Nevertheless, many, if not
most, educators in North America, especially at the
secondary level, tend to view the content they teach
as purely academic and objective (Gunderson, 2000).
Gutiérrez and Rogoff (2003) advocated that researchers
move away from reductive notions that locate
cultural differences as traits within individuals,
and they call scholars and practitioners to attend to
communities’ “history of engagement” (p. 21). Just as
some discourses are conceived as more prestigious
than others across mainstream contexts, not all literacy
practices and texts enjoy equal status. What counts
as literacy depends not only upon the purpose, context,
and texts but also the social status of those who
engage in particular practices. Clearly, sign systems are
valued differently, as Hull and Katz (2006) stated,
“with some sign systems having more status in certain
societies, communities, and historical moments than
others” (p. 46). Nevertheless, individuals’ “background
experiences, interests, and lifelong experiences
may prepare them for knowing how to engage in particular
forms of language and literacy activities”
(Gutiérrez & Rogoff, p. 22; italics added).
The final theoretical assumption to frame this
investigation is one that sees immigration as a process,
not merely an event during which national borders are
crossed. In fact, this ongoing, nonlinear process involves
myriad challenges and stressors (Louie, 2006;
Suárez-Orozco & Suárez-Orozco, 2001; Suárez-
Orozco, Todorova, & Louie, 2002). In addition to the
pressure of developing competencies in the host language
and adjusting to often very different educational
systems, immigrant students, especially Latino/as,
face school segregation and discrimination (Rolón-
Dow, 2004; Suárez-Orozco, Suárez-Orozco, &
Doucet, 2004; Williams, Alvarez, & Hauck, 2002).
For example, as Louie stated, “Generally speaking,
Latinos have been typified in the national collective
consciousness as underachievers” (p. 369).
Moreover, recent examinations of the school
experiences of young Latinas in middle and high
school point to the ways in which constructions of
race, gender, and class interact to further their marginalization
(Rolón-Dow, 2004; Suárez-Orozco &
Qin, 2006; Williams et al., 2002). Several scholars
have suggested that youths’ reliance on a dual frame
of reference to assess the social practices and instrumental
opportunities between aquí y allá (here and
there) produce emotional resources that may likely
serve as a protective mechanism (Louie, 2006).
These somewhat overlapping and complementary
sociocritical perspectives challenge narrow, simplistic,
and uncritical notions of Latino/a students’
literacy practices. They also challenge the ideas that
the path to immigrant youths’ adaptation is straightforward
assimilation, and they challenge the universality
of coming-of-age as race and gendered neutral
constructs that can be understood in isolation from
the social, historic, and economic contexts in which
they exist.
Drawing from portraiture:
Methodology
I draw from portraiture, a genre of inquiry developed
by Lawrence-Lightfoot (1983), for several
reasons. First, I am interested in exploring the highly
personalized experiences of recent immigrants in
U.S. schools, and portraiture is “vividly personal”
(Lawrence-Lightfoot, 1983, p. 373); it is anchored in
the life experience of people and their contexts.
Moreover, it facilitates and provides a theoretical and
methodological bridge for conversation across disciplinary
boundaries. Portraiture is not about a search
“for a rendering of objective truth or replicable evidence,
but for the reconstruction and reinterpretation
of experience, which can include perspectivetaking,
projection, distortion, and fantasy”
(Lawrence-Lightfoot, 1994, p. 603). These characteristics
were essential to the present portrait of
Yanira in this investigation. I have considered as data
her stories about her early literacy experiences in the
Dominican Republic and other out-of-school experi-

574 Reading Research Quarterly OCTOBER/NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2007 42/4
ences in the U.S. town where she came to live, despite
not having observed all of the practices and experiences
she described and realizing the dynamic
nature of stories that “recur and change depending
on who is listening” (Hull & Katz, 2006, p. 45).
Portraiture is not representative of the postmodern
turn in qualitative research; it borrows from
phenomenological traditions and values using “techniques,
standards and goals of ethnography”
(Lawrence-Lightfoot & Davis, 1997, p. 13). It shares
many characteristics with ethnographic case studies
in that it has the potential “to capture the richness,
complexity and dimensionality of human experience
in social and cultural context, and convey the perspective
of the people who are negotiating those experiences”
(Lawrence-Lightfoot & Davis, p. 3),
including that of the portraitist, while emphasizing
the engagement of “the ongoing dialectic between
process and product” (p. 216).
However, portraiture also “pushes against the constraints
of those traditions and practices” (Lawrence-
Lightfoot & Davis, 1997, p. 13; italics added) with its
particular attention to aesthetic expression and the dialectic
relationship between subject and portraitist.
Drawing on the fictional work of Eudora Welty,
Lawrence-Lightfoot and Davis elucidated the subtle,
but important, difference between ethnographers and
portraitists: “Ethnographers listen to a story while portraitists
listen for a story” (p. 13; italics in the original).
They claimed that “there is a crucial dynamic between
documenting and creating the narrative, between receiving
and shaping, reflecting and imposing, mirroring
and improvising” (p. 12).
Drawing from portraiture enabled me to craft
an image that would “allow the reader to see, feel,
smell and touch the scene...and [produce] a picture
[to] which the reader [would] feel drawn”
(Lawrence-Lightfoot & Davis, 1997, p. 59), thus
“creat[ing] a narrative that [could] bridge the realms
of science and art” (Lawrence-Lightfoot & Davis, p.
4). Consequently, it also facilitates the dissemination
of research “to broader audiences, beyond the academy”
(Lawrence-Lightfoot & Davis, p. 14).
Ultimately, portraiture provided a vehicle through
which I could tell a story about Yanira’s literacies
within the dynamic circumstances of her life experiences
(Gutiérrez & Rogoff, 2003).
Participant selection and data collection
Yanira was one of 4 focal participants in a larger
study, from a sample of 239 immigrant students between
10 and 15 years of age from the Dominican
Republic, Mexico, and several Central American
countries, mainly Nicaragua and Honduras. The
study explored the nature of literacy practices among
Latino/a students, in and out of school (Rubinstein-
Ávila, 2001). After a face-to-face, one-on-one literacy
survey that examined all participants’ self-reported
social contexts, purposes, languages of choice, and
weekly frequency of engagement with a list of potential
literacy activities, four students were selected as
focal participants. My original sample of 239
Spanish-speaking youths was a subset of the 385 immigrant
youth who participated in a larger, multiyear
study entitled the Longitudinal Immigrant Student
Adaptation study (LISA). The LISA study, with
which I was intricately involved as a research assistant
for three consecutive years (see Suárez-Orozco &
Suárez-Orozco, 2001, p. viii), focused on the adaptation
of immigrant students and their parents from
four language groups to the United States. Although
literacy practices were not among the foci of the LISA
study, the two annual student interviews, many of
which I conducted, provided me with much insight
on the immigration process of my focal participants.
I selected Yanira from among my focal participants
as the subject of this portrait for several reasons.
First, her mode of entry, through what
Grasmuck and Pessar (1991) referred to as “step migration,”
is representative of the immigration pattern
of Dominicans to the United States. Because of the
lengthy process of obtaining permanent visas, which
may entail several years, Dominican children are often
sent to the United States ahead of their parents,
or with only one parent, to live with relatives while
the other parent and other siblings await the issuing
of their permanent visas. Second, Yanira’s responses
to the literacy survey indicated that she engaged in
an array of biliteracy practices, especially out of
school. Finally, the two LISA interviews, one of
which was conducted a year before data collection
for my own study began, pointed to an array of
complex immigration processes in action.
Encouraged by several literacy scholars who
make a case for revisiting studies through different
lenses (Alvermann, 1999; Payne-Bourcy &
Chandler-Olcott, 2003), I revisited a particular set of
data from a different place and selected one participant
from among the four around which to craft a
portrait. Ragin, who has written extensively on case
studies in sociology, claimed that “what the research
subject is a ‘case of’ may not be known until after
most of the empirical part of the project is completed”
(Ragin & Becker, 1992, p. 8).
I drew on several data sources to craft the portrait.
First, I kept field notes from weekly ethnographic
observations across classes during Yanira’s last

From the Dominican Republic to Drew High: What counts as literacy for Yanira Lara? 575
semester in eighth grade and across core content
courses during her entire ninth-grade academic year,
following Spradley’s (1980) model (descriptive, focused,
and selective observations). Second, I conducted
four formal interviews with Yanira; two
semistructured LISA interviews, which focused on
her demographic profile, mode of entry into the
United States, and initial impressions about her
adaptation; and two semistructured and open-ended
interviews, which focused exclusively on her literacy
practices (i.e., values, beliefs, and experiences in the
Dominican Republic and in the United States). The
interviews lasted approximately 80 to 90 minutes
each and were transcribed verbatim. Third, I kept
field notes from informal conversations with Yanira,
three of her teachers, and one of the school counselors.
Because one of the teachers requested not to
be identified by content area, I simply refer to them
as Yanira’s teachers.
From among the classroom observations,
which totaled approximately 50 school days, I chose
to focus only on those from Yanira’s history and ESL
classes for the following reasons:
(a) According to Yanira and to my analysis, these were the
two classes in which students were required to engage more
intensely with reading and writing.
(b) In contrast to other classes, except for mathematics, the
instructional mode in these classes did not rely primarily on
teacher-centered lectures.
(c) According to Yanira and my field notes, these classes incurred
fewer student disruptions; therefore, from her perspective,
learning was maximized.
Several of our occasionally longer, informal
conversations occurred after school, over a meal at a
nearby Dominican eatery. During the school day,
our conversations were short but often provided rich
information on events I had missed. Unlike the interviews,
in which Yanira offered direct but at times
unelaborated answers to my questions, these conversations
yielded a richer flow of dialogue. Once I
shared with Yanira my own experience as an immigrant
child to an unknown country with an unfamiliar
language, although I had been a few years
younger than she, her own stories became more detailed
and elaborate. Although my interactions with
her were conducted almost entirely in Spanish, and
with her teachers in both languages, field notes were
mainly jotted in English; occasionally I jotted particular
expressions in Spanish.
Data analysis, interpretation,
and crafting of the portrait
The data analysis, like the data collection, was
also conducted bilingually. For example, the interview
transcripts were analyzed in Spanish and field
notes in English. The interview excerpts provided
throughout this portrait are my own English translations
of the Spanish transcripts. As a matter of principle,
I believe that it is important to present both
the original excerpts and the English translations. In
fact, I have followed that convention in previous
work (Rubinstein-Ávila, 2002, 2004). As a speaker
of several languages, I am aware that meaning can be
lost in translation (Hoffman, 1990); however, in this
particular case, presenting all of Yanira’s quotes in
both Spanish and their English translations would
have interfered with the flow of the portrait.
Analysis of the data also followed an adaptation
of the constant comparison method (Glaser &
Strauss, 1967). In a dialectical and nonlinear process
that combined analytic induction, synthesis, and reflection,
I first analyzed the data as I collected and
compared them to data that had been analyzed previously.
Occasionally I also applied discourse analysis
to selected passages of Yanira’s transcripts. Following
Gee’s (2005) suggestions, I sought to understand
what socially situated identities and activities Yanira’s
literacy practices enacted. For the crafting of the portrait,
which occurred long after data collection
ceased, I reanalyzed the data that pertained to Yanira
first by data type; field notes from observations and
conversations were analyzed separately from interview
transcripts. Then I triangulated across data
sources, keeping in mind the chronology and the
context of the data.
Although I disagree with Seidman (2006) that
“the interviewer must come to the transcript prepared
to let the interview breathe and speak for itself” (p.
117), because I believe that researchers play a more
agentive role in the analysis of interview transcripts, I
do agree with his contention that “crafting a profile is
an act of analysis” (p. 128; italics added). Thus, I followed
Seidman’s sequential process for crafting several
profiles from our interview transcripts, from the selected
classroom observation field notes and from
conversations with Yanira and three of her teachers.
This sequence reduced the data and facilitated the application
of definition, process, activity, and event
codes, which eventually led to the shaping of key
themes that addressed the research questions posed.
For example, definition codes helped me highlight the
ways in which Yanira defined good readers. Event
codes helped me understand the importance of certain

576 Reading Research Quarterly OCTOBER/NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2007 42/4
events that marked what counted as literacy for Yanira
throughout her life (e.g., reading from the church’s
stage, being selected as the main character of a school
play). Process codes alerted me to Yanira’s acculturative
makers, such as changing her presentation of self,
forging new peer relationships, and referring to herself
earlier in the study as Dominicana and later as a
Latina, a descriptor that seemed to have marked the
merger of her gendered identity and an emerging panethnic
identity.
As I composed the portrait, I kept in mind
Gee’s question (2005): What situated meaning and
values seemed to have been attached to places, times,
people, objects, and institutions, and how were they
relevant to Yanira’s literacies? Interspersing Yanira’s
words, my own, and, where appropriate, the research
literature produced a portrait that in some sense was
coconstructed by “the convergence of our experience”
(Lawrence-Lightfoot, 1994, p. 611)—in this
case, Yanira’s and my own. Because data collection
and analysis of artifacts, such as assignments, did not
occur systematically, these only served to illustrate
incidences that were substantiated by other data
sources. Finally, the crafting of the portrait, the
“stitching” between the themes, occurred much like
“weaving a tapestry” (Lawrence-Lightfoot & Davis,
1997, p. 247).
My role and stance as
researcher/portraitist
As a fluent, but not native, Spanish speaker, I
quickly connected with the participants at Drew. I
had been a certified Spanish bilingual teacher and
taught immigrant students from Mexico and Central
America in California for several years before returning
to complete my graduate work. I am a Brazilianborn
Jewish Latina, first-generation college graduate,
and the daughter of World War II concentration
camp survivors. Moreover, I have been an immigrant
twice: as a child, and later to the United States as a
young adult in my early 20s. Before attending a doctoral
program at a high-profile university, I had been
a nontraditional student. Thus, my background, life
experiences, and social capital, which included the
funds of knowledge and rich linguistic repertoire of
practices of the many communities of which I have
been a part, no doubt influenced my access to the research
site and the relationships I developed.
As the portraitist, I fully admit to “having
placed myself in this picture—not in the center,
dominating the action and overwhelming the
scene...but definitely revealing [my] angle of vision”
(Lawrence-Lightfoot & Davis, 1997, p. 59). I do not
contend to have captured the essence of Yanira’s
whole, for I do not believe any one portraitist could
have achieved such a feat. I also do not dispute that a
different portraitist, guided by other theoretical lenses,
would have composed a different portrait.
Nevertheless, I do hope the portrait I crafted will enable
readers to move back and forth between keeping
sight of both the larger societal forces (such as
English-only legislation) and the local contexts that
shaped Yanira’s transnational literacy practices.
Town and school
The physical context is integral to portraiture
for “it not only offers clues for the researcher’s interpretation
of the actors’ behavior, it also helps understand
the actors’ perspectives” (Lawrence-Lightfoot
& Davis, 1997, p. 43). Thus, I situate Linenville (a
pseudonym for a midsize, industrial city in New
England) historically and economically: Linenville
had historically been the adoptive home of many
European immigrant groups who came to work in
its textile mills in the 1800s. Known as the “immigrant
city,” it continued to be the adoptive home of
Puerto Ricans and Dominicans who began arriving
in the mid to late 1900s, decades after the mass migration
of Dominicans to the United States following
the U.S. reoccupation of the Dominican
Republic in 1965.
On my first visit to Linenville, the many
boarded-up downtown establishments were a testament
to the town’s economic decline. On the other
hand, small new businesses, such as grocery and partysupplies
stores, seemed to flourish, confirming
Davis’s (2001) assertion that Latinos have “tropicaliz[ed]
cold urban spaces” (p. 61) by revitalizing neglected
and decaying neighborhoods.
During the year 2000, approximately 60% of
Linenville’s 72,000 residents were Latino/as, with
many employed in its shoe factories. Dominicans
accounted for a substantial portion of Linenville’s
population, which is the second highest Dominican
concentration outside of New York City. Although
Linenville is only a one-hour ride by commuter
train from a major New England metropolis, the
residents of this industrial city viewed the big city as
being a world apart. Despite the commute, which
included several train transfers, I looked forward to
my weekly visits.
The Dominican presence in Linenville was definitely
conspicuous, making a clear mark on the
city’s monochromatic and drab industrial landscape.
Within a few minutes’ walk from the train station,

From the Dominican Republic to Drew High: What counts as literacy for Yanira Lara? 577
Merengue music, which is the essence of Dominican
identity, emanated loudly from homes, cars, and
stores. Spanish was heard more often than English
on Linenville’s busiest commercial streets. The aroma
of culinary delights such as arroz moro con habichuelas
(white rice and reddish beans), tostones (fried
plantains), or the sweeter maduros (fried bananas),
and the periodic sancocho (a hearty stew that includes
several types of meat) drifted from several
Dominican-owned eateries, almost masking the
fumes of passing cars.
Drew High School (also a pseudonym) at the
time of this investigation had a student body just under
1,200 students including approximately 80%
Latino, mainly from the Dominican Republic and
Puerto Rico. The school had just lost its state accreditation
and had consequently undergone a radical
personnel transformation. Therefore, most of the
classified staff, teachers, and administrators had been
newly hired. To combat the school’s high dropout
rate, especially from ninth to tenth grade, the school
launched a special retention effort called “Cohort
Achieve,” that targeted incoming freshmen in fall
1999. The initiative sought to provide incoming students
with extra academic support, such as greater
one-on-one attention from school counselors. Thus,
in fall 1999, a cohort of approximately 500 ninthgrade
students, Yanira among them, was divided into
six teams among three school counselors.
An attempt to mitigate the lack of trained
bilingual and ESL teachers was made by creating
teams of content area and ESL teachers but, as an excerpt
from one of my ethnographic observations indicated,
this coteaching arrangement seemed
haphazard at best. Contrary to the recommendations
of school-reform scholars (Davison, 2006) the implementation
of team teaching at Drew High was a
top-down decision. According to the three teachers
with whom I engaged in numerous conversations,
they were not provided the opportunity to make deliberate
choices about their teammates, nor were
they paired according to complementary, compatible
talents or shared educational philosophies. Two of
the three teachers shared with me that they were unclear
as to what exactly was the purpose or the objective
of team teaching.
Like many large high schools, Drew’s interior
walls were painted white and institutional gray.
Except for a couple of commercial posters outside
the main office and half a dozen dusty trophies in a
glass case, the school walls were mostly blank. Few
classrooms displayed students’ work; classroom
clocks were either inaccurate or did not work at all.
Some classrooms displayed an American flag; in others,
the flagpoles were bare.
Spanish and English were heard in the hallways,
cafeteria, and yard. But, as Zentella’s (2005)
observations aptly illuminated, the creative form of
language used by many bilinguals rendered binary
categories such as English/Spanish too constraining.
Drew High’s overall message to the students
struck me as highly contradictory. On one hand, the
creation of “Cohort Achieve” suggested that students
were valued, but like other schools serving lowincome
minority students, the school exercised strict
control over space and students’ bodies (Morris,
2005). Visitors to Drew High were met at the entrance
to the building by a uniformed guard; they
were expected to sign in before being directed or escorted
to the main office. The bathrooms and hallways
were also frequently monitored. During most
of my weekly visits, there was at least one police car
on duty outside Drew’s main entrance, even two by
the time students were let out. Although, given recent
events, this may be construed as prudent, several
members of the LISA research team at the time
concurred that visitors to more affluent suburban
schools were not likely to be met with such “prudence.”
I once approached a (white) policeman
standing immediately outside of the school’s gate to
inquire about the need for such tight security. He
smiled and retorted back in what I interpreted as a
condescending manner: “Doesn’t it make you feel
safer?” However, my experiences walking up and
down the school’s hallways, even at peak times, when
traffic was at its heaviest, were either uneventful or
positive. On a few occasions, male students politely
held heavy doors open for me in an often exaggerated,
chivalric manner that included a deep bow.
Yanira’s transnational world
Yanira’s dark, shiny eyes reflected a bold expression
that contrasted with her round baby face and her
timid smile. She was born in Tenares, a semiurban
town in the municipality of Salcedo, several hours
from the capital. But the family soon moved to Santo
Domingo. Yanira’s emigration to the United States
was common among Dominican immigrants; it is not
uncommon for older children to come, before or
without their parents, to live with relatives (Suárez-
Orozco & Suárez-Orozco, 2001; Suárez-Orozco et al.,
2002). Her Dominican stepfather, who was already
living in the United States for several years, first
brought her to live with a maternal aunt in Linenville
in July 1995, while Yanira’s mother stayed behind
awaiting her permanent visa. Yanira attended the fifth

578 Reading Research Quarterly OCTOBER/NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2007 42/4
grade that year, but the separation from her mother
was too emotionally taxing for Yanira; thus, she consequently
returned to the Dominican Republic by the
end of that academic year. Although Dominican students
face some of the same challenges faced by other
Latino/a immigrant groups, Suárez-Orozco et al.
(2002) found that Dominican and Central American
immigrant youths are more likely than other youths in
their study (from China, Haiti, and Mexico) to be
separated from a parent and siblings for long periods,
often years, due to the difficulty in obtaining permanent
visas. They also found that youth who experienced
such separations were more likely to report
experiencing depressive symptoms (Suárez-Orozco et
al., 2002).
Two years after she returned to the Dominican
Republic, Yanira and her mother arrived together in
the United States to join the stepfather in Linenville.
Yanira began attending the eighth grade, which is
when I first met her. During our first LISA interview,
she expressed a great deal of nostalgia toward
the Dominican Republic, where she claimed to have
felt safer and “at home” with “[her] own people and
[her] own language.” Yanira expressed the characteristic
dichotomy through which Dominicans typically
assess their experiences allá (there) with those aquí
(here) (Duany, 1994).
But the interview clearly pointed to her acknowledgement
toward the new identity formations
in her new context: “There, we were all Dominicans;
here it’s different.... Here you have to prove you are
[Dominican], or be mistaken for Puerto Rican.”
While at the time I may not have fully grasped the
meaning in this statement, I later realized that by
differentiating themselves from Puerto Ricans,
Dominican students may have been shielding themselves
from even greater discrimination (Davis,
2001). Her ongoing consciousness of her emerging
identity as a Dominican immigrant may have been
more or just as central to her acculturation process as
language. In a short autobiographical essay written
during her first semester, displayed outside her classroom
along with several others, Yanira described herself
as Dominicana in the first sentence. She also
described herself as trigueña (referring to a not-sodark
shade of skin that is a result of the multiracial
background common in the Dominican Republic),
with brown eyes and pelo bueno (good hair)—a
phrase signifying a racial marker that serves to emphasize
one’s Caucasian, over one’s African, origins
(Badillo & Badillo, 1996). Yanira’s ongoing identity
work was taking place within a context in which patterns
of racial identification, and racial inequalities,
were different from those she was familiar with in
the Dominican Republic (Louie, 2006). In fact,
Duany (1994) has described the complexities entailed
in the formation of transnational identities
among Dominicans living in New York’s
Washington Heights.
Although it was not exactly what Yanira had
imagined before she arrived, and despite what she
called “the dreadful winters that [went] on forever,”
Linenville had become her new home. The next academic
year at Drew, Yanira was placed in one of the
ESL/bilingual teams in which all her peers in the
core content courses were also English-language
learners. Contact with fluent or native Englishspeaking
peers was limited, much like the classrooms
described in Valdés’s (2001) case studies. Although
most of Yanira’s peers were Puerto Ricans and
Dominicans, she clearly stood out. As other studies
have indicated, immigrant students often stand out
from students who are either born or brought up in
the United States; the newcomers are distinguishable
by their attire and their way of being (Olsen, 1997;
Rubinstein-Ávila, 2001; Suárez-Orozco, 2001;
Williams et al., 2002).
The most differentiating markers between the
newcomers and the more seasoned students at Drew
were their shoes, the fit of their clothes, their hairstyles,
and the manner in which they carried themselves
and interacted with others. Newcomers rarely
sported expensive name brands; boys tended to wear
fitted, tucked-in button-down shirts and often wore
leather dress shoes. Girls wore simple clothes, no
make-up, and a thin chain around their neck with a
small cross or a discreet medallion with the image of
their birth saint. U.S.-born and more seasoned students
were likely to catch visitors’ attention first.
They wore oversized (boys) or skin-tight (girls)
clothes; many of the boys were highly adorned with
thick and shiny gold chains with large medals. Most
of the girls wore make-up, short skirts, and tight
tops; they also sported identical heavily gelled and
coifed hairdos and long, sparkly nails. These students
seemed to exude self-confidence in the ways in
which they walked about, rarely alone, and talked.
Yanira, however, still held tenaciously to her
baby fat and wore plain, loose-fitting clothes, flats,
no make-up, and no press-on fingernails. Her long,
wavy, dark brown hair was usually gathered in a simple
ponytail. Although I do not suggest that Yanira
felt this way, the first thing that came to my mind as
I attempted to describe how Yanira stood out from
her classmates is a passage in Hoffman’s (1990)
memoir in which she describes her own feelings as a
young woman about immigrating from Poland to
Canada: “After my passage across the Atlantic, I

From the Dominican Republic to Drew High: What counts as literacy for Yanira Lara? 579
emerged as less attractive, less graceful, less desirable...without
bounce in my hair, dressed in clothes
that [had] nothing to do with the current fashion”
(p. 109). Thus, in addition to developing competencies
in a new language while engaging in identity
work, Yanira was also coming of age in a new and
unknown context, riddled with new social pressures.
For several months, clearly solidifying her social
isolation, Yanira proudly emphasized the distance
between her and her female classmates, most
of whom had either been born in the United States
to Dominican and Puerto Rican parents or had
moved to the United States at a young age. She
clearly disapproved of them and often referred to
them as “too Americanized”:
They run around with boys, they do the boys’ homework for
them. And you know...[covering her mouth with one hand
and lowering her voice to almost to a whisper] it’s that.... It’s
that they let them touch them. You know...touch them.
They have no morals!
But Yanira was quick to notice the contradictory
messages Latinas received from both their community
and teachers about becoming American.
Scholars have noted that among first- and secondgeneration
immigrant youth, especially young
women in their teens, “becoming American” has
both positive and negative connotations (Olsen,
1997; Qin-Hilliard, 2003; Suárez-Orozco & Suárez-
Orozco, 2001). While they are expected to learn
English, adapt, and do well in school, they are
strongly discouraged from adopting certain attitudes
associated with American youth: independence, defiance,
and interest in boys. In a mocking tone that
underscored these inconsistencies, Yanira explained,
“You are supposed to learn English quickly, but not
to be too American, like those girls.” Like many newcomer
girls, Yanira’s whereabouts were closely monitored;
she was instructed by her mother to return
home as soon as school was out. Yanira wished she
could “hang out” at the public library after school as
many of her classmates did, where she would have
access to homework help, the Internet, and more opportunities
to make new friends. Public libraries are
one of the few sanctioned public spaces for Latino/a
youth to socialize away from the monitoring eyes of
parents (Godina, 2004).
But after the first few months of attending
Drew High, a clear shift occurred and Yanira’s demeanor
was no longer forlorn. At about the same
time, her family moved out of their cramped, rented
room and into a one-bedroom apartment within
walking distance from Drew. Yanira appeared to be a
great deal happier; she made two new good friends,
both newcomers from the Dominican Republic,
whom she took under her wing. At that point she
began to employ the same competencies she employed
as her mother’s translator and cultural broker
to help her two new friends. This seemed to have instilled
in her much confidence and purpose. She
seemed to move about with greater assurance; she
also started wearing her jeans tighter, styled her hair,
and even sported a sequence of many thin colored
bracelets, a popular accessory among the girls attending
Drew that year.
By the end of her first semester at Drew, Yanira
had found several ways to fit in. She even admitted
that although she missed the Dominican Republic
and looked forward to accompanying her mother
there as often as she could, she would have had a difficult
time returning there permanently. She argued
that most of her extended family by that time were
already living in the United States, and she admitted
that she would miss some of the things to which she
had become accustomed, mainly “the computers at
school and the malls” (in that order). During an earlier
interview, Yanira also mentioned having grown
accustomed to the uninterrupted supply of electricity
in the United States.
Thus, Yanira’s dual frame of reference, comparing
her life opportunities in the Dominican Republic
with those in the United States, helped her make
sense of her transculturation and cope with its demand.
She claimed that schools in the United States
were better: “Here teachers know more. In Santo
Domingo, for example, they’d tell you that there are
nine planets, but they would not tell you which they
were.” She was also confident that there were many
more opportunities for advancement through education
and employment in the United States. In fact,
one phrase she repeated frequently was En este pais
solo no salen adelante los que no quieran trabajar (In
this country, only those who don’t want to work
don’t get ahead). Interestingly, Yanira’s stepfather was
unemployed at the time, and they did not have a
home phone.
Redefining what counts as literacy:
Repertoire of transnational literacy
practices
Little is known about the language and literacy
practices and schooling background of immigrant
students who enroll in middle and high schools in
North America (Anderson & Gunderson, 2001;
Snow, 2006), but Yanira’s recollections of her literacy

580 Reading Research Quarterly OCTOBER/NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2007 42/4
socialization across home, preschool, church, and
school in the Dominican Republic helped me understand
how she came to conceptualize reading as performance.
She spoke fondly of the positive memories
of her aunt’s preschool, such as memorizing the alphabet
through frequent choral recitations of
rhymes. She remembered being read to by her teachers
and drawing pictures based on those stories.
Yanira reported that as she grew a little older, she
practiced reading (her own words) aloud by herself
and to her mother and other family members. She
claimed that she was eager to read well so she could
be selected to read at the children’s Sunday mass. In
fact, at the age of 10, she was selected to read from
the church’s stage, an experience she remembers as “a
dream come true.” She believed that, as a result, her
teacher offered her one of the leading roles in a
school play that same year, which seemed to be another
intense literacy-related memory. Looking intently
through her classroom window, as if staring at
a vast horizon, she appeared content in her nostalgic
thoughts as she spoke of a time in which she read
confidently on stage, out loud in her first language
in front of her family and community.
Given Yanira’s literacy experiences in the
Dominican Republic, it was not surprising that when
asked to define a good reader, Yanira did not hesitate
to characterize reading as print that is meant to be read
out loud and to an audience. According to Yanira, a
good reader reads fluently and smoothly and could
project her voice emphatically. “It’s important to read
with a lot of expression and poise.” As she said that,
Yanira straightened her posture, squaring her shoulders
and tilting her head a little upwards, as if she was
preparing to sing an operetta, “not flat and
boring...[but] loud and clear—definitely loud enough
so the people in the back can hear you.” Although
Yanira admitted she was not an avid reader and
claimed to read mostly as a pastime, she nevertheless
reported, on the questionnaire and in interviews, reading
an array of texts and genres such as magazines, religious
materials, romances, and historical books.
Even though Yanira associated writing mostly
with school assignments, she shared that she had written
daily to her mother, in Spanish, during the year in
which the two were living apart. She referred to them
as “letters” (cartas), perhaps because she wrote them
on loose, lined sheets, but she had no intentions of
mailing them; they seemed to have taken on the form
of a diary or journal. According to Yanira, these letters
expressed her longing for her mother and also recorded
Yanira’s day-to-day activities and even some of her
secrets. Yanira did not mail the letters to her mother;
instead, she saved them in a box in order to share
them with her in person, which she claimed to have
done once they were reunited in the Dominican
Republic. Yanira offered to show me the letters she
had kept for a couple of years but later told me she
had disposed of them because she suspected that one
of her cousins had been snooping around, trying to
find and read them.
Bridging aquí y allá: Transnational
literacy practices
According to Yanira, printed texts did not permeate
the family’s day-to-day affairs, either in the
Dominican Republic or in the United States. The
family did not receive much mail; because the use of
prepaid international phone cards had become ubiquitous
by 1999–2000, the family rarely wrote letters
to the few family members left in the Dominican
Republic, and e-mails were not exchanged, either.
Yanira did not have a computer at home, nor did
family members in the Dominican Republic. She
claimed her stepfather brought home Spanish and
English newspapers regularly, and that while he
checked out game scores, especially baseball, and
glanced at the sports pictures, she read the cartoons.
Yanira could not remember any instances in which
she had observed her mother read, but she occasionally
helped her mother fill out order forms for products
used in her mother’s home-operated hair salon.
Although print may not have been abundant
in her household, language was. Yanira claimed that
much like in the Dominican Republic, the family’s
TV and radio were almost always on in their apartment,
often simultaneously and always tuned to
Spanish-speaking channels. Since they had been in
the United States, mother and daughter had gotten
closer; on Monday through Friday evenings they
watched novelas (Spanish-language soap operas) and
exchanged predictions about the plots. In fact, one
of their favorite activities was to bet on their weekly
outcomes: “We’ll say, for example, I think so and so
will find out by Friday if her boyfriend is or isn’t her
half-brother, or, this week we’ll know if the baby soand-so
is carrying is really her husband’s or not,” she
once told me, rolling her eyes, laughing and gesturing
in a way that indicated she was poking fun at the
intense drama in these scenarios. “It’s fun to see
who’s right, me or her. We’ll bet something like...an
ice cream, or something like that...if it’s summer. She
[mother] refuses to leave the house in the winter.”
Another literacy practice that was new to Yanira
was translating for her mother. Although her mother
performed most of the shopping transactions in

From the Dominican Republic to Drew High: What counts as literacy for Yanira Lara? 581
Spanish, Yanira accompanied her to doctor appointments
where the transactions were more likely to be in
English. As a result, Yanira was sometimes late to
school but rarely missed an entire school day.
However, Yanira’s teachers, at least the three with
whom I spoke regularly, were unaware of her role as
translator for her mother and her newcomer friends.
Two of them (both monolingual English speakers)
said they had never heard Yanira actually speak
English and were surprised that her English competencies
allowed her to perform such a demanding task.
They listened carefully to my explanation that Yanira
seemed to apply many of the strategies she already relied
upon as a speaker and reader of Spanish to make
sense of English texts, to which one of them, visibly
impressed, blurted, “I’ll be darned!” All three teachers,
including the bilingual teacher, seemed to agree that
Yanira was reticent about learning English.
All three teachers also expressed their frustration
toward parents “yanking” their kids from school
to “go back home for weeks at a time.” They seemed
utterly perplexed by the families’ “back and forth”
movement and believed it was counterintuitive to the
pursuit of success in the United States—“where they
chose to live.” The two monolingual teachers, especially,
seemed to have a limited understanding of how
one’s first and second languages may interact dialogically
in a nonlinear fashion in the development of
second-language competencies (Dworin, 2003; Moll
& Dworin, 1996; Valdés, 2004). As one of the teachers
put it, the frequent trips back to the islands resulted
in students “always starting from scratch.” This
particular teacher pointed out that just as Yanira was
finally making “some headway” in English, enough to
transfer to the more advanced ESL level, she went
back to the Dominican Republic with her mother for
a month in January 2000, which, according to the
teacher, “brought Yanira almost back to where she
had started.” Incidentally, Yanira had not shared with
any of her teachers that there had been a death in the
family in Santo Domingo.
Although Yanira clearly indicated a preference
for reading in Spanish, the language in which her
competencies were stronger, it was the availability of
texts on a particular topic of interest that ultimately
determined the language in which she read, as can be
inferred by the following quote:
I sometimes read books about history [on my own]. I get
them from the libreria (bookstore)—the one by the school.
They’re mostly in English since they don’t have many books
in Spanish. I like to read about the Egyptians, the pyramids—all
that stuff.
The use of the word libreria (bookstore) to mean library
here is interesting. Whereas library and libreria
are false cognates, Yanira probably used the word libreria
because borrowing books from a public library
was a new “American” experience.
Yanira sought texts that supported her affective
connection to the Dominican Republic and her
sense of belonging and being Dominican:
Also, I like to find out about the origins of the holidays in
my country, like the religious holidays—the days of the
saints, that kind of thing. On this particular topic I have
found books in Spanish. The one book I liked best was this
history book about guardian angels; about how they made
their appearances. I find all of that fascinating!
Titles? [responding to my question] I don’t really remember
any. I think this one was called Angeles y archeangeles
(Angels and Archangels). [responding to my question, which
sought clarification as to her categorizing the book as history]
I call it history because it’s the truth; it’s what happened
long ago. It’s all in the Bible!
Thus, while Yanira was eager to learn English
and succeed in her adoptive country, she sought texts
to help her assert her Dominicanness, her “sense of
group belonging, grounded in the idea of common
ancestry, history, [religion] and culture”—all of which
are elements of identities (Louie, 2006, p. 364).
The complex work of developing a
repertoire of biliterate practices
As the work of Jiménez, García, and Pearson
(1995, 1996) demonstrated, reading in a second language,
as in Yanira’s case, is not the same as learning
to read for the first time in one’s second language
(Snow, 2006). Nevertheless, much of the “research
[that] reports on the literacy development of bilingual
children [and youth] ignore[s] the nature of
communities in which they live, the quality of instruction
they receive...and the daily opportunities
they experience to speak English or another tongue”
(Snow, p. 648). In fact, the procedural pattern of
participation I observed across most classes at Drew
left little room for the type of talk among students
and teachers that would not only enable but also enrich
the accomplishment of academic tasks and play
an important role in students’ investment and ownership
of their learning (Hawkins, 2004; Villalva,
2006). Nevertheless, my continuing conversations
with three teachers also revealed their limited knowledge
about the process of developing bilingualism
(Jiménez, 2001). Thus, even though Yanira was present
and seemingly engaged, following the flow of
instruction and even pushing herself to complete

582 Reading Research Quarterly OCTOBER/NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2007 42/4
most written assignments in English, the teachers’
main concern was that she did not show expected
outcomes in verbal production.
To her teachers’ chagrin, Yanira never volunteered
answers in English; even in Spanish she only
answered questions that were directed toward her. In
spite of the different types of accented “Englishes”
heard across Drew High, Yanira was still hesitant to
speak English in class, for fear of being teased.
Yanira’s reticence to speak English in class, amidst her
peers, seemed to be an especially touchy subject. In
her memoir, Hoffman (1990), who immigrated with
her family to Canada from Poland as she, too, was
coming of age, claimed that she was likewise silent in
class, propelled by similar fears. Hoffman writes
about feeling acutely conscious of what “correct, fluent,
good” English sounded like, long before she
“could execute it” (p. 122). Our conversations about
the difficulties Yanira experienced speaking up in
class, especially in English, yielded long silent pauses
and sighs of frustration. Although little attention has
been given to the age-related complexities within
which first- and second-language development interact
(Snow, 2006), especially when coming of age,
there seems to be some evidence indicating that
speaking in a foreign-accented English in the presence
of peers is perceived as more embarrassing for
adolescents than it may be for children or for adults
(Szuber, 2007).
Nevertheless, field notes from classroom observations
and our conversations pointed to Yanira’s relentless
strategic use of her broadening biliteracy. She
made strategic use of Spanish translations of assignments
to complete them in English, and, like the
middle school participants proficient in Spanish in
Jiménez et al.’s (1995, 1996) studies, Yanira applied
comprehension strategies with which she was already
familiar to make sense of her English textbooks:
“There are words [in English] I don’t know, but,
most of the time I don’t even bother with the dictionary,
since most of the time I get it,” she once told
me, as she made circular motions with her index finger
on the page on which I was jotting my field
notes; thus, indicating that she sought context clues
immediately around particular unknown words. As a
result, she claimed to always manage to glean at least
the general gist of the text. She was especially aware
of the many existing cognates pairs the two languages
shared and sought them deliberately, even if
she sometimes stumbled across a few false cognates:
I don’t understand everything [referring to her textbooks in
English]...like each little word, but I can read the books and
answer the questions they give us. Lots of words are a little
like in Spanish, but sometimes they only look alike. I use
words in the question to answer. The truth? Reading [in
English] is not so hard.
Although two out of the three teachers I talked
to interpreted Yanira’s quiet demeanor in class as disinterest
in learning English, other data sources flatly
contradicted that notion. Yanira was eager to develop
her English competencies despite her anxiety around
producing English among peers. Just as Hoffman
(1990) was keenly aware that English was the “language
of the present, even if at that point in my life
it did not feel as the language of the self” (p. 121),
Yanira had also internalized a causality between mastering
English and social mobility. A statement she
repeated often was Sin el inglés uno no sale adelante
(Without English one does not move forward).
In fact, Yanira expressed frustration and disappointment
about the lack of opportunities that were
available for her to “practice English” in school,
where “most of the kids speak Spanish. When we go
shopping...almost everything is in Spanish. In a way
it’s not so different from Santo Domingo.” Thus,
Yanira sought to practice English through reading
popular magazines such as Seventeen and People.
Apparently these texts also served as guides for cultural
level scripts of conduct:
My cousins and I get them in English to practice more.... I
learn a lot of new words in English. They are fun to
read...and they tell you what goes on in MTV—fashion and
stuff like that. And [they] also give you advice on like what
to do when the boyfriend dumps you.
Reading popular magazines while sprawled
over her aunt’s bed with her two slightly older female
cousins fulfilled myriad functions. According to
Yanira, the three regularly mined the magazines for
young male band members, arguing over who was
just cute and who was hot. Thus, this social practice
allowed Yanira the opportunity to practice her developing
popular English competencies and glean cultural
norms of conduct in a new context, such as
what constituted acceptable flirtatious behavior for
young women her age. The magazines also functioned
as guides to practice femininity (Kelly,
Pomerantz, & Currie, 2006) in a safety zone that did
not truly challenge gender and cultural expectations
and norms in daily life.
Yanira’s exposure to and experience
with literacy across content area classes
On the wall of one of Yanira’s ninth-grade
classrooms hung a notice indicating that students at

From the Dominican Republic to Drew High: What counts as literacy for Yanira Lara? 583
Drew High were expected to engage in process writing
at least once a day. However, across the approximate
50 school days I spent observing classrooms at
Drew throughout the 1999–2000 academic year, I
never observed teachers and students following the
suggested steps.
The following vignette was composed as a
composite of several, almost identical, observational
field notes from Mr. Ninio’s (all teachers’ names are
pseudonyms) history classes.
Students were seated individually in rows. Mr. Ninio, a chubby
Puerto Rican man in his early 50s, distributed a packet of worksheets
photocopied from a workbook that supplemented the textbook,
in English. Except for a few late students, there were few
disruptions. The worksheets were in English; Spanish versions of
the worksheets “for those who need it,” were stapled to the back.
Students, accustomed to the routine, either started filling out the
worksheets or acted as if they were doing so. One section focused
on key vocabulary for the chapter the students were expected to
have read; it required students to match words to their definitions.
Other sections entailed multiple-choice questions, most focused
on evaluating students’ literal comprehension. A few of the questions
required students to fill in a sentence or two.
Some students worked collaboratively; others, like Yanira,
worked alone. Mr. Ninio then summarized, in Spanish, the chapter
in the English textbook. Yanira filled out the English worksheet
while frequently consulting the Spanish translation attached
to the back. At some point, Mr. Ninio began circulating to consult
individually with students who raised their hands to summon
him. At times he called the attention of the entire class
(mostly in Spanish) to a certain question. A couple of students
were engaged quietly in activities that were unrelated to the task at
hand, but perhaps because they were not disrupting others, Mr.
Ninio seemed to ignore them. When the bell rang, students got
up and left, taking their worksheets with them.
Mr. Ninio’s classes were orderly and predictable;
the primary focus was the retrieval of factual information
from the textbook and completion of worksheets
for each chapter. Across the many classes I observed,
Mr. Ninio made few, if any, attempts to elicit students’
funds of knowledge or engage students in debates
that would stimulate meaningful engagement
or language development in either Spanish or English
or help students construct meaning from the text.
Nevertheless, this was one of Yanira’s favorite classes,
because according to her, unlike other teachers, Mr.
Ninio demanded that students respect him and each
other. Also, in contrast to some of her other classes,
the expectations in Mr. Ninio’s classes were clear to
Yanira. She especially appreciated the availability of
the Spanish worksheets, even if she resolved to complete
the worksheets in English.
From my perspective, however, the instruction
in Mr. Ninio’s class was not qualitatively different
from many of the other classes I observed at Drew.
Scholars such as Achugar and Schleppegrell (2005),
who focus on textbooks, claim that language use,
particularly in history textbooks, is “incongruent and
distant from the everyday language [even most native
English-speaking] students are familiar with” (p.
314); and although they claim that texts require
readers to “recognize how a wide range of rhetorical,
inter- and intraclausal resources function together to
create meaning in the context of particular texts” (p.
314), I did not observe Mr. Ninio, or any other
teacher across Yanira’s program, applying strategies to
support students’ potential lack of familiarity with
text structures (see Alvermann, Phelps, & Ridgeway,
2007). Although Mr. Ninio was bilingual, my observational
field notes did not record any incident in
which he pointed out cognate pairs or called students’
attention to the contrasts between discourse
structures in Spanish and in English.
Like most classes in Yanira’s program, the ESL
class was team taught, in this case by Mr. Conchas
and Ms. Doolen. Both appeared to be in their mid-
30s, and their relaxed exchanges with the students
(e.g., “So, Jorgito [little George], did you make it to
school on time today?”) were indicative of the warm
rapport they had established with the students. On
most days students worked on their ESL booklets at
their own pace, either individually or in pairs, seeking
teachers’ input frequently. Once a week, usually on
Fridays, students did not sit in rows but instead gathered
around the teachers in a semicircle so they could
share their essays. The issue students were expected to
address each week was suggested by Mr. Conchas,
who stressed the importance of providing students
with opportunities to express their own opinions in a
persuasive manner. Because my regular weekly visits to
Drew were mostly on Thursdays, I was able to observe
this class format only three times. Although I had
many more field notes on the other ESL classes, I
chose to craft a vignette of one of these weekly classes
because they were, by far, the most open-ended,
student-centered classes I observed at Drew.
Twenty students were seated in a semicircle, not in their usual
rows facing the chalkboard. The two teachers were standing, facing
the students and leaning against the chalkboard. Mr. Conchas,
whose enunciation had a distinctive Spanish flavor and rhythm,
reminded students that they had been asked to take a stand and
explain their opinions and actions. Mr. Conchas underscored the
importance of taking a stand on a particular issue and stated it was
important to be able to explain one’s views on a topic. Mr.
Conchas did most of the talking, while Ms. Doolen occasionally
coaxed students to stay on task, listen attentively, retrieve their
“essays,” and get ready to read them out loud. Mr. Conchas set the
stage by reiterating the assignment: “So, if you were to discover
that you were an adopted child, how would you feel and what
would you do? Would you look for your biological parents?
Would you confront them if you found them?”

584 Reading Research Quarterly OCTOBER/NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2007 42/4
Because I had not observed the class immediately prior to this
one, I do not know if words, such as confront, had been defined or
explained to the students, or if the fact that it is a cognate had been
pointed out. A number of students volunteered to read their short
essays out loud. Students’ essays varied a great deal in coherence,
narrative structure, clarity, and grammatical correctness. Most of
the essays, however, elicited a similar degree of enthusiasm from the
teachers. The more emotional and longer responses (mostly written
by young women) elicited cheers, whistles—even applause—
from the students. Teachers’ feedback strictly addressed the content:
“That’s a good point, Marta!” When students booed, both teachers
reminded them that they were all entitled to their own opinions.
Most of the students seemed to be engaged in the activity. Most had
an open notebook with their “essays” in front of them; some tried
to iron out the wrinkles from their crumpled loose sheets. Mr.
Conchas tried to engage mildly disruptive students without reprimanding
them (e.g., “Joel, what do you think about what la Nancy
just said she’d do?”)
Although Yanira did not volunteer to read her essay, Mr.
Conchas signaled that it was her turn. Noticing her hesitation,
Ms. Doolen reminded her that all students were taking a chance,
and that risk-taking was an important part of learning English.
Yanira read her short essay in a low and monotonous tone, practically
inaudible from where I sat. Mr. Conchas praised her for her
contribution and moved on to the next student. Several students
read their “essays”; their long run-on sentences indicated their unfamiliarity
with the future conditional tense. Rather than: “I
would try to find my parents,” most used the simple future tense:
“I will try to find my real parents.”
Mr. Conchas encouraged discussion among the students; he
“revoiced” students’ comments, modeling the correct use of the
tense: “Would you, Graciela, leave the parents who raised you for
all those years to live with your biological parents?” and “How
about you, Julio? Would you also refuse to meet your biological
parents?” At one point, Mr. Conchas reiterated a couple of the
words he heard students use, and modeled several potentially viable
synonyms that would have expressed the feelings the students
were trying to convey: “Yes; good! You’d feel bad, sad, angry,
mad—Good!”
Almost all students were on task and participated
actively. The lesson did not make use of the
chalkboard, against which the teachers typically
leaned. As I listened to the students read their short
essays aloud, my visceral reaction was to jump up
and begin listing as many possible vocabulary words
on the board as their essays may have evoked: fortunate,
elated, betrayed, rejected, joyous, abandoned, regretful,
bewildered, perplexed, anxious, jealous,
impatient, solvent, depressed, angered, remorseful, guiltridden,
consumed, enraged, despondent, supported,
nurtured, concerned, suspicious, and so on.
During our conversation immediately after this
particular ESL class, Yanira expressed that she had
difficulty stating a point and defending it (in writing).
She explained that she understood what was expected
of her but still did not understand how to
support her assertion in ways that were acceptable.
On another occasion, during an interview that occurred
earlier in the year, Yanira expressed that al-
though teachers seemed to expect something specific,
they often failed to convey to students what that
was. She found this particularly frustrating because
she felt that it was the responsibility of the school to,
in her words, “teach you what you need to know and
how to do it.” From her perspective, what counted as
literacy across her classes at Drew, and even whose
knowledge counted, were utterly unclear. Again,
Yanira relied on her dual frame of reference, comparing
her schooling experiences in the Dominican
Republic and the United States in her attempt to
make meaning of the different academic expectations
and literacy demands:
In Santo Domingo, they expected us to learn and remember
the information straight from the book or from copying
the teacher’s notes [on the board], but here I am not so sure
what exactly we should be learning. They sometimes say,
“Write about what you think” about this or that. They say,
“Go get information on the Internet,” or they say, “The answers
are all in the chapter.” It’s confusing.... What I find
[on the Internet] is.... It’s not always the same as what it
says in the [text]book. And also, what I think may not be
correct. So, even if I understand the English, I still sometimes
don’t know how to complete it [the assignment].
To summarize, the discourse and literacy practices
Yanira experienced across most classes at Drew
were likely to be incompatible with the demanding
language competencies that count in classrooms in
which students are prepared for college (Valdés,
2004). Yet Yanira expressed her intentions to pursue
a college degree, and she was cognizant of the fact
that a college degree could take up to five years or
more. Although there are limits to what can be
taught explicitly, the academic literacy practices that
prevailed across Drew’s core classes were not likely to
provide Yanira, and students like her, the adequate
scaffolding to engage in the extensive language demands
ELL students are exposed to in college classes
(see Valdés, 2004). As Valdés’s (2001) and Harklau’s
(2001) work illustrates clearly, at times the accommodations
and programs that are intended to facilitate
immigrant and ELL students’ adaptation may
exacerbate their lack of access to a rigorous curricula,
perpetuating their peripheral status. While I am not
claiming that Drew High is representative of U.S.
high schools with a high number of Latino/a EAL
students, in contrast to high schools that function as
“Communities of Commitment” (Ancess, 2003),
students who graduate from schools such as Drew, or
the high schools portrayed in Lopez’s (1998) and
Valenzuela’s (1999) studies, may have to do so in
spite of bureaucratic imperatives.

From the Dominican Republic to Drew High: What counts as literacy for Yanira Lara? 585
Summary of findings and
discussion
The portrait I crafted as a result of this investigation
illustrated how a young Dominican woman
in her first year of high school in the United States
used her expanding repertoire of literacy practices to
negotiate the ongoing process of immigration. The
first research question to guide the crafting of
Yanira’s portrait was, What counts as literacy for a
young Dominican immigrant woman as she makes
the transition into high school in the United States?
The elicitation of Yanira’s early literacy socialization
in the Dominican Republic, prior to immigrating to
the United States, reveals that Yanira’s literacy socialization,
not unlike the socialization of young
Latino/as in working class households in the United
States, was rich with language and literacy experiences
in which the Bible played a central role. These
experiences include memorizing songs and hymns,
reading and reciting passages from the Bible,
retelling Bible stories, engaging in Bible study, and
using particular culturally salient styles of speech
(Farr & Barajas, 2005; González, 2001; Mercado,
2005; Rubinstein-Ávila, 2004; Zentella, 2005).
Yanira’s storied selves, which “are multiple and
changing within contexts of activity and interaction”
(Hull & Katz, 2006, p. 45), point to the confidence
she felt once in her “ways with words [and literacies]”
in and out of school in the Dominican
Republic among “[her] people” and “[her] language.”
Understanding Yanira’s experiences as a competent
participant in the largely performative literacy
practices, and knowledge valued by her home community,
such as reading out loud from the stage of a
church and performing in school plays, watching,
predicting, and discussing novelas, even copying
teachers’ notes from the classroom chalkboard (attending
to form and penmanship), may provide U.S.
educators and literacy researchers valuable insights
on what counts as literacy and knowledge for older
immigrant and EAL students enrolling in U.S.
schools. For example, Yanira’s classification of a book
about angels and archangels as history may point to
a strong overlap across cultural practices, faith,
knowledge, and genres in her conceptualization of
what counts as literacy. In light of this, and
Thompson and Gurney’s (2003) findings on the
centrality of religion in the acculturation and adaptation
of immigrant youth, the effect of early religious
socialization on later literacy practices may warrant
more in-depth examination.
Once in the United States, Yanira not only
faced the pressures of learning a new language and
developing academic skills in the new language but
also was expected to gain awareness of the particular
kinds of literacy practices and knowledge that were
valued in her adoptive society. Yanira’s frustration as
she realized that her local repertoire of performative
literacy practices may not have been useful or valued
in the new context demands our attention. The shift
between her feelings of competence in a known and
familiar environment (the Dominican Republic) and
her confusion toward the new, seemingly more dynamic,
complex, and not at all transparent literacy
demands in the U.S. context, can be heard in her
own words:
[B]ut here I am not sure what exactly we should be learning.
They sometimes say, “Write about what you think”....
They say, “Go get information on the Internet,” or they say
“The answers are all in the chapter.” It’s confusing.... What
I find...it’s not always the same...and...what I think may not
be correct.
Yanira’s portrait suggests that she was learning “to take
on new identities along with new forms of knowledge
and participation” (Moje & Lewis, 2007, p. 19).
Yanira’s continual formation as an acting subject in a
transnational space entailed the “acqui[sition], appropriat[ion]
and reconceptual[ization] of knowledge
within and across discourse communities” (p. 19).
The second research question explored the ways
in which Yanira’s transnational experiences affected
her repertoire of literacy practices. Although when the
question was posed it may have assumed a one-way
directionality, the portrait reveals a more complex and
dialectic interaction between Yanira’s expanding repertoire
of literacy practices and her life experiences in a
transnational space. Her existing repertoire of literacy
practices and developing English competencies provided
opportunities for the expansion of her repertoire.
This expansion allowed her to broker for her
mother and friends as she negotiated the demands of
adaptation for herself and others. New literacy experiences
such as reading popular teen magazines to practice
English and to learn culturally appropriate ways
of being a teen in the United States, on the other
hand, also provided an opportunity to expand her
repertoire of literacy practices as she expressed herself
in new genres and in two languages.
Living in a transnational space also affected her
expanding opportunities—access to a library close to
her school allowed her to strengthen her affective
connections to the Dominican Republic through
texts in both languages. Exploring Yanira’s literacy
practices through a transnational perspective adds

586 Reading Research Quarterly OCTOBER/NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2007 42/4
layers of complexities to the already demanding pressure
of developing English-language competencies.
In line with the new literacy studies perspective
(Street, 2003), the funds-of-knowledge construct
(González, Moll, & Amanti, 2005; Moll et al.,
1992), and repertoire of literacy practices (Gutiérrez
& Rogoff, 2003), Yanira’s portrait underscores that
immigrant youths’ literacy practices cannot be understood
in isolation, that is, from a monolingual
perspective or from school-related experiences alone.
Immigrant and EAL youths’ expanding repertoire of
literacy practices ought to be viewed from a bilingual
and biliterate lens, as well as from the lens of
transnationalism. Hoffman (1990) and Norton
(2000) both underscore, even if in vastly different
ways and genres, that people negotiate a sense of self
across time and space through language and literacies.
In fact, Yanira’s continuous use of Spanish and
developing English competencies gave her multiple
purposes to maintain affective ties to the Dominican
Republic and to navigate transculturation successfully
(Feliciano, 2001; Suárez-Orozco & Suárez-
Orozco, 2001). Thus, future intersection of
transnational and literacy studies is essential as we
continue to explore issues related to agency and
identities, as suggested by Street (2007). Yanira’s portrait
serves as an example, as Gutiérrez (2007) stated,
that “students’ environments and practices also are
consequences of globalization, transmigration, and
the intercultural experiences of their everyday lives”
(p. 117).
In addressing the third question, about the role
of school in helping Yanira develop the literacy practices
that count in an era of globalization, the portrait
seems to confirm the new literacy contention
that what counts as literacy in particular communities
is by no means universal, neutral, static, or necessarily
empowering. The ethnographic snapshots of
Yanira’s classes indicate that they are not likely to
have provided the “‘ways with words’...associated
with [academic and professional] success” (Payne-
Bourcy & Chandler-Olcott, 2003, p. 585). Studies
focusing on Latino/a students’ secondary education
conducted over a span of a decade and across several
states reveal that Latino/a students are likely to be
taught by inexperienced teachers, often teaching
with emergency credentials, or teachers’ aides, in segregated
and watered-down ESL programs that often
lack content instruction, or are likely to attend content
area classes in which no type of accommodation
or language support is provided (Godina, 2004;
Katz, 1999; Valdés, 2001, 2004; Valenzuela, 1999).
The ethnographic snapshots provided in this portrait
seem to confirm such findings; schools such as Drew
High may be doing little to assist teachers to recognize
the many demanding pressures associated with
living in a transnational space, acknowledge the
needs, and build upon the strengths that immigrant
students, like Yanira, bring to secondary schools.
Given that a positive link has been established between
the linguistic and cultural brokering immigrant
students engage in to help their families and
academic outcomes (Dorner, Orellana, & Li-
Grining, 2007), Latino/a youths’ expanding repertoire
of practices and school outcomes ought to be
examined more systematically.
Yanira’s portrait also seems to suggest that literacy
research from the new literacy studies lens ought
to focus on the continuum between local and global
practices, as opposed to focusing on either extreme
(Street, 2007). Although these answers are neither
exhaustive nor final, they help map a space to consider
other ways to examine where literacy practices,
second language development, and transnational
identity formations are likely to intersect. Ultimately
though, these issues are not unique to Yanira but are
pertinent to many immigrant youth in an increasingly
global era.
Conclusion and implications
This portrait focused on the experiences, perceptions
and literacy practices of a young woman
who immigrated from the Dominican Republic as
she made the transition to high school in an industrial
New England city with an established
Dominican enclave. Although her self-report about
her literacy practices beyond the classroom revealed
myriad transnational literacy practices, Yanira’s exposure
to what counted as literacy in school was rather
narrow and unidimensional. Yanira’s experiences and
literacy practices do not apply to all immigrant students,
or to all Dominican students. Her experiences
illuminate the need to understand and help students
who are in similar situations, who live in a transnational
space, and who are negotiating shifting identities
and developing biliterate competencies.
Therefore, immigrant youth, like Yanira, “must be
understood in relation to the [literacy] practices of
which they are a part” (Orellana & Gutiérrez, 2006,
p. 119).
The major implication of this portrait for literacy
researchers is that we can no longer ignore the
change in demographics across secondary schools.
The academic success of secondary students for
whom English is an additional language hinges upon
identifying “not only how immigrant youth are com-

From the Dominican Republic to Drew High: What counts as literacy for Yanira Lara? 587
ing to acquire new language skills, but what forms of
languages [and literacies] are represented and available
to them,” both in and out of school (Hawkins,
2004, p. 17; italics added). Moreover, an important
implication for teacher educators of secondary content
area teachers is that, as challenging as it is to develop
second-language competencies to excel in
secondary school and beyond, it is only one of the
many demands immigrant students and even
second-generation, U.S-born Latino/a students face.
And while the development of bi- or multicultural
identities is viewed as a positive development, scholars
such as Zarate, Bhimji, and Reese (2005), remind
us that such identities are neither homogenous nor
stable; they do not exist at a “fixed location where
cultures meet peacefully in perfect coordination”
(p.112).
This is especially relevant for the aftermath of
the No Child Left Behind legislation, as ELLs in
many states are being “transitioned” into “regular”
programs after completing their first academic year in
Structured English Immersion. Students like Yanira,
who in a sense are developing the competencies needed
to live in and negotiate “both worlds” (symbolically
or not), ought to be understood and supported.
Adolescent EAL students, like Yanira, are likely to
view the development of English competencies and
literacy practices as crucial for their own and their
families’ successful adaptation, even if their eagerness
may not be immediately apparent. Therefore, silence,
especially in secondary classrooms, is not to be interpreted
or construed as resistance to learning English, a
lack of English competency, or as underachievement.
Also, rather than viewing students’ first-language
use as a threat to their English language development,
or approaching second-language development from a
monolingual perspective, educators at all levels ought
to realize that all languages are assets to be built
upon, often simultaneously, in an additive—not subtractive—manner
(Valdés, 2004). Secondary students
ought to be encouraged to make full use their repertoire
of literacy practices to navigate and make sense
of the cognitive and linguistic demands they face in
school and out. It is essential to acknowledge, build
upon, embrace, and incorporate immigrant students’
literacy repertoires of practices, including their performative
functions, with greater transparency. In
fact, Hull and Katz’s (2006) work with youths’ digital
stories reveals the array of possibilities “in
integra[ting] notions of perfomance with theories of
language, text and identity” (p. 47).
Similarly, living in a transnational space ought
not to be viewed as a threat to immigrant or secondgeneration
students’ successful adaptation to life in
the United States. Rather than frown upon students’
prolonged visits to their families’ homeland and focus
on their loss of English, “we must explore ways
in which we can help students leverage theses social,
cognitive and linguistic skills for their own learning
and development, as well as for the benefit of others”
(Orellana & Gutiérrez, 2006, p. 120). Finally, I hope
that Yanira’s portrait illuminates the need to
strengthen our teacher-education programs and the
need to continue to explore ways in which to embed
immigrant and EAL youths’ funds of knowledge in
our pedagogy and curricula (González et al., 2005;
Moje, Ciechanowski, Ellis, Carillo, & Collazo, 2004;
Moje, Collazo, Carrillo, & Marx, 2001) and to embrace
their expanding linguistic talents as we deepen
our understanding of immigrant youths’ transnational
literacy practices and learning within and also
beyond school walls.
ELIANE RUBINSTEIN-ÁVILA emigrated from Brazil in the early
1980s. Her multilingual, multicultural background, and immigration
and professional experiences have propelled her teaching and
research interests. Her work has been published in Anthropology and
Education Quarterly, Linguistics and Education, Journal of Adolescent
& Adult Literacy, and Educational Leadership (among others). Her
involvement with the Center of Mathematics Education for Latino/as at
the University of Arizona has enabled her, and a colleague in
mathematics education, to examine the ways in which working class,
middle school Latino/a students—many of whom are foreign born—
use their full linguistic repertoire of practices and funds of knowledge
to reason mathematically and solve challenging problems in a duallanguage
program. This particular project is being partly supported by
an Elva Knight Research Grant from the International Reading
Association. Rubinstein-Ávila can be contacted at University of Arizona,
College of Education, Department of Language, Reading and Culture,
PO Box 210069, Tucson, AZ 85721-0069, USA, or by e-mail at
rubinste@u.arizona.edu.
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AUTHOR’S NOTE
I would like to thank the anonymous RRQ reviewers and David
Reinking for their insightful critique and constructive feedback on earlier
drafts of this article. I would also like to thank Yanira and the teachers at
Drew for sharing their thoughts and allowing me into their space, and
the Suárez-Orozcos (Carola and Marcelo) for their support.
Received June 18, 2006
Final revision received May 15, 2007
Accepted May 21, 2007