Barrio Nerds: Latino Males, Schooling, and the Beautiful Struggle

When Pulitzer Prize nominated author Richard Rodriguez published his autobiography, Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez in 1982, he received much criticism due to his views on issues such asassimilation, bilingual education, and affirmative action. Polemically,since Rodriguez's publication, a book length revisiting of some of hisideas is for the most part non-existent.

Inspired by Rodriguez's work, Barrio Nerds: Latino Males, Schooling, and the Beautiful Struggle presents a compelling window into the schooling trajectories of Latinomales, while also providing critical and alternative views. Theseportraits of working-class students and academics that achieved academic success move beyond clean victory narratives and thus complicate ournotions of success and rising up. Blending versus separating theexploration of street kid/school kid identities, we get a glimpse intothe merging and collision of multiple cultural worlds in ways that areliberating and often painful and full of ambivalence. Additionally, weget provocative takes on giftedness, the philosophical and politicaldimensions of home, and masculinities.

Ultimately, Barrio Nerds: Latino Males, Schooling, and the Beautiful Struggle is a reminder of how academic achievement is often embedded in gain and in loss and it is a thoughtful meditation on how many Latino males ofworking-class origins do not reject the past, but instead use thisprecious knowledge to holistically live out the present.