Prof. Mirelsie Velázquez has won the American Educational Studies Association's (AESA) Critics' Choice Book Award for her book Puerto Rican Chicago: Schooling the City, 1940-1977. Prof. Velázquez and her fellow CCBA recipients will be recognized at the AESA Annual Meeting on November 8th.
In Puerto Rican Chicago, Prof. Velázquez tells how Chicago's Puerto Ricans pursued their educational needs in a society that constantly reminded them of their status as second-class citizens. Communities organized a media culture that addressed their concerns while creating and affirming Puerto Rican identities. Education also offered women the only venue to exercise power, and they parlayed their positions to take lead roles in activist and political circles. In time, a politicized Puerto Rican community gave voice to a previously silenced group--and highlighted that colonialism does not end when immigrants live among their colonizers.