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This book takes a distinctive approach to exploring the experiences and identities of minoritized Latinx mothers who are raising a child who is labeled as both an emergent bilingual and dis/abled. It showcases relationships between families and schools and reveals the myriad of ways in which school-based decisions regarding disability, language and academic placement impact family dynamics. Treating the mothers as experts, this book uses testimonios to explore not only what mothers know but also how they develop funds of knowledge and how they apply them to their child’s education. The stories shed light on how mothers perceive their child’s disability, how they engage with their child and the value they place on bilingualism. The narratives reveal the complex lives mothers lead and the ways in which they strive to meet the academic and socioemotional needs of their children, regardless of the financial, physical and emotional costs to them. This book has significant implications for researchers and professionals working in bilingual education, special education, inclusive education and disability studies in education.
Winner of the AAAL First Book Award 2023.
María Cioè-Peña provides a powerful analysis of Latina mothers advocating for their children at the intersection of language, race and disability that challenges deficit perspectives by pointing to the rich cultural and linguistic traditions that they build on as they navigate oppressive systems designed to marginalize them and their children.
Cioè-Peña’s work is situated in both refusal and expansion. She refuses a deficit perspective of mothers rooted in standards and norms of whiteness. The expansion is in her focus on those who have been largely neglected by education research – mothers of emergent bilingual children who were also labeled disabled. Her positioning of these mothers as knowledge generators is an essential contribution to conversations about education, language, disability, and race.
The book will undoubtedly be an asset to researchers, policy makers, and teachers interested in bilingual education, disability studies, and special education. Even so, it remains reader friendly since it is not excessively scientific and theoretical concepts are well explained [...] Cioè-Peña makes the reader feel as though we are with her as she interacts with and interviews the mothers, and their children. This is facilitated using some pictures, plenty of transcripts, and by personal accounts of her relationships with the mothers.
— Eric Alvarez, Sorbonne Nouvelle University, France
María Cioè-Peña is Assistant Professor at Montclair State University, USA. Her research interests are deeply rooted in political economy, raciolinguistic perspectives and critical dis/ability awareness within schools and families, and encompass bilingual children with dis/abilities, their families and their ability to access multilingual and inclusive learning spaces within public schools.
The Able Bendiciones of Latina Mothers: A Foreword
Preface: A Note on Positionality
Part 1: The Social Constructions of Motherhood – Poverty, Monolingualism and Disability (by Proxy)
Chapter 1. Introduction: Why Mothers? Why These Mothers?
Chapter 2. 'They don’t care, they don’t understand, they’re in denial': Constructions of Mothers as Others
Chapter 3. Other People's Stories
Chapter 4. Setting the Stage: An Introduction to the Mothers and the Significance of a Place and Time
Chapter 5. At Home with the Testimonialistas
Part 2: Testimonios: Mothers Speak
Chapter 6. Mothering With, Through and Alongside Dis/ability Labels
Chapter 7. Broken Promise: The Security of Bilingualism for the Future and the Ambiguity of Bilingualism in the Present
Chapter 8. Teacher? Student? Both: Mothers as Language Brokers
Chapter 9. Bending Roles: Resisting Exclusion, Creating Paths for Engagement
Chapter 10. Broken Spirits: Challenges Faced by MoEBLADs
Chapter 11. Motherhood as Purpose
Part 3: Making Room for Mothers
Chapter 12. Repairing Broken Systems: Radical Possibilities
Chapter 13. Moving Forward Together
Making Personal, Professional and Global Connections: An Afterword