Word Images

World-renowned scholar, writer, and American intellectual Norma Elia Cants autobiographical book Cancula: Snapshots of a Girlhood en la Frontera has achieved tremendous success. Winner of the Premio Aztln Literary Prize, it is used in high school and college classrooms across the nation, thanks to its depictions of immigration and growing up along the Texas-Mexico border. Cant reconstructs for her readers an intimate portrait of a young girls experience via family photographs and strong narrative writing.Word Images: New Perspectives on Cancula and Other Works by Norma Elia Cant is a collection of critical essays that for the first time unveil Cants contribution as a folklorist, writer, scholar, and teacher. Word Images unites two valuable ways to view and use Cants work: Part I comprises essays that individually examine Cants oeuvre through critical analysis. Part II is dedicated to ideas and techniques to improve the use of this literature by teachers and professors, with a particular focus on tools for using Cancula. Cant herself has prepared the terrain for this collection, thanks to the hundreds of readings she has delivered at universities, community centers, libraries, and schools. The contributors to this collection seek to enable students and instructors alike to embark on life-changing world-vision paradigms that embrace Cants technique of intellectually challenging her audiences while introducing the dissonance that exists between memory, photography, and storytelling. Contributors: Steven W. Bender, Aurora Chang, Michael Cucher, Vanessa Fonseca, Maria Herrera Sobek, Gabriella Gutirrez y Muhs, Ellen McCracken, Mara Esther Quintana Millamoto, Aldo Ulisses Resndiz Ramrez, Rose Rodrguez-Rabin, Jess Rosales, Carlos Sibaja-Garca, Mara Socorro Tabuenca, Juan Velasco.