Towards an ethics of solidarity in Pam Muñoz Ryan’s Esperanza rising and Mañanaland
Supporting Agencies
- This research was supported by the Spanish National R&D Program, PID2021-127052OB-100 (“World-traveling: Narratives of Solidarity and Coalition in Contemporary Writing and Performance), financed by MCIU/AEI/FEDER, EU, and by the R&D Program of the Principado de Asturias, through the Research Group Intersections (SV-PA-21-AYUD/2021/51893).
Abstract
This paper explores the ethics of solidarity that pulses through Pam Muñoz Ryan’s Esperanza rising (2000) and Mañanaland (2020) as a response to the inherited colonial structures that shape the characters’ lifeworlds. Drawing on decolonial and postcolonial feminist frameworks, as well as Rubén Gaztambide-Fernández’s there modes of solidarity –relational, transitive, and creative–(2012), this ethical orientation foregrounds the protagonists’ development into socially committed and future-oriented adolescents. Through their journeys, they learn to inhabit the perspectives of others, interrogate beyond what is known, and build alliances across differences for the sake of a better future, thereby challenging the logic of coloniality. Ultimately, this paper highlights the timely contribution of these YA narratives in inviting young readers to imagine a more just and compassionate world, instilling a much-needed sense of hope in today’s increasingly polarized global landscape.
Downloads
-
Abstract0
-
PDF0
References
Ahmed, S. (2014/2004). The cultural politics of emotion. Routledge.
Anzaldúa, G. E. (1987). Borderlands/La frontera: The new mestiza. Auntie Lute.
Anzaldúa, G. E. (2015). Light in the dark/Luz en lo oscuro: Rewriting identity, spirituality, reality (A.L. Keating, Ed.). Duke University Press.
Anzaldúa, G. E., & Keating, A. (Eds.). (2002). This bridge we call home: Radical visions for transformation. Routledge.
Aldama, F. L. (2018). The heart and art of latino/a young people’s fiction. In F. L. Aldama (Ed.), Latino/a children’s and young adult writers on theart of storytelling (pp. 3 –25). University of Pittsburgh Press.
Álvarez-López, E., & Fernández-García, A. (Eds.). (2023). Cosmopolitan strangers in US Latinx literature and culture: Building bridges, not walls. Routledge.
Bauman, Z. (2017/2016). Strangers at our door. Polity.
Beck, S. A. (2013). What the raising box doesn’t know: Migrant farmworkers young adult novels beyond Esperanza rising. [Conference presentation] 94th American Educational Research Association Conference, San Francisco, CA, April 27th, 2013.
Berglind, N. (2020). [Review of the book Mañanaland by Pam Muñoz Ryan]. Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books, 73(6), 274 –275.
Boffone, T., & Herrera, C. (2022). Latinx teens: US popular culture on the page, stage, and screen. University of Arizona Press.
Fernández-García, A. (2020). Geographies of girlhood in US Latina writing: Decolonizing spaces and identities. Palgrave Macmillan.
Fernández-García, A. (2022). May the circle be Unbroken: Looking at the relations between self, other and the world in Julia Alvarez’s Finding Miracles. Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, 64, 403 –415.
Gaztambide-Fernández, R. (2012). Decolonization and the pedagogy of solidarity. Decolonization: Indigeneity, education & society 1(1), 41 –67.
Guerin-Gonzales, C. (1996). Mexican workers and American dreams: Immigration, repatriation, and California farm labor, 1900–1939. Rutgers University Press.
Grosfoguel, R. (2002). Colonial difference, geopolitics of knowledge, and global coloniality in the modern-colonial world-system. Review, 25(3), 203 –224.
hooks, b. (1984). Feminist theory. From margin to centre. South End Press.
Johnson, H., & Gasiewicz, B. (2016). Examining displaced youth and immigrant status through critical multicultural analysis. In H. Johnson, J. Mathis & K. G. Short (Eds.), Critical content analysis of children’s and young adult literature (pp. 28 –43). Routledge.
Lorde, A. (2017). Your silence will not protect you. Silver Press.
Lugones, M. (1987). Playfulness, ‘world’-travelling, and loving perception. Hypatia, 2(2), 3 –19.
Lugones, M. (2003). Pilgrimages/peregrinajes: theorizing coalition against multiple oppressions. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
Lund, J. (2012). The mestizo state: Reading race in modern Mexico. University of Minnesota Press.
Mignolo, W. D. (2011). The darker side of modernity. Global futures, decolonial options. Duke University Press.
Mohanty. C. T. (2003). Feminism without borders. Decolonizing theory, practicing solidarity. Duke University Press.
Muñoz Ryan, P. (2000). Esperanza rising. Scholastic.
Muñoz Ryan, P. (2020). Mañanaland. Scholastic.
Prieto López, P. (2024). Black women centre stage: Diasporic solidarity in contemporary black British theatre. Routledge.
Quijano, A. (2000). Coloniality of power, Eurocentrism, and Latin America. Nepantla: Views from South, 1(3), 533 –580.
Rhodes, C. (2021). Corporeal, phenomenal, and artistic transformations in Pam Muñoz’s Esperanza rising. Children’s Literature Association Quarterly, 46(1), 41 –56.
Rivera, C. (2020). Yesterday, today, and tomorrow. American Book Review, 41(6), 12.
Sandoval, C. (2000). Methodology of the oppressed. University of Minnesota Press.
Scholz, S. J. (2008). Political solidarity. The Pennsylvania State University Press.
Sedgwick, E. K. (2003). Touching feeling: Affect, pedagogy, performativity. Duke University Press.
Yountae, A. (2017). The decolonial abyss: Mysticism and cosmopolitics from the Ruins. Fordham University Press.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
The works published in this journal are subject to the following terms:
1. The Publications Services at the University of Murcia (the publisher) retains the property rights (copyright) of published works, and encourages and enables the reuse of the same under the license specified in item 2.
2. The works are published in the electronic edition of the magazine under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial Share Alike 4.0.
3.Conditions of self-archiving. Authors are encouraged to disseminate pre-print (draft papers prior to being assessed) and/or post-print versions (those reviewed and accepted for publication) of their papers before publication, because it encourages distribution earlier and thus leads to a possible increase in citations and circulation among the academic community.
RoMEO color: green
