Immigration and the Challenge of Education

Immigration and the Challenge of Education is a social drama analysis of a school setting and neighborhood community in South Central Los Angeles. This book vividly portrays the lived experiences of a group of Latina immigrants (las madres) in South Central Los Angeles as they struggled to better the lives of students at Mirasur elementary school and to combat the violence in their community. Part ethnography and part testimony, the text weaves symbolic anthropology, narrative analysis, and critical participatory research into a broad methodological framework. Building upon Victor Turner's notion of social drama and the late Chicana feminist writer Gloria Anzaldua's paths of conocimiento this text brings together the women's dialogue and observations of the world around them as they embarked on an oftentimes conflicting process of putting into action their developing political consciousness.

Nathalia Jaramillo, formerly an Assistant Professor in the Department of Educational Studies at Purdue University, is a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Education, University of Auckland New Zealand.