Carol Brochin

Salas de Libros Mediator Workshop

Join us for a two-day immersive workshop for Salas de Libros mediators. We provide a certificate, resources needed to host a Sala/Salon and support in strategies for building communities of readers. Breakfast and lunch provided. We will also have a kick-off social and reception, Friday, May 17, from 5 to 7 p.m. on campus!

If you would like to attend this workshop and become a Salas de Libros Mediator, apply now.

Salas de Libros is a reading promotion program based on a highly successful program from Mexico called Salas de Lectura. Salas refers to spaces in houses, community centers and public parks, where people gather in conversation around sofas, cushions and comfortable chairs to build literate communities around books and civic engagement. Literary salons are based on Black and African American social, cultural and intellectual gatherings that occurred during the 1920/30s. Salas and Salons are intergenerational by design, engaging children, youth and elders, led by community members known as mediators who establish meaningful bridges between books and readers to encourage immersion into reading and conversation.

The Worlds of Words Center and the Southern Arizona Writing Project invite passionate readers and community members to apply to be a part of the second cohort of Literary Mediators. Interested mediators should be avid readers, be willing to promote a love of reading and literacy for social change, live in Tucson or southern Arizona, commit to attending this two-day workshop, and volunteer to facilitate a Sala/Salon in their community in Summer/Fall 2024.

Applications for consideration are due by May 1, 2024. Apply here: https://forms.gle/J2XsLN2kt2Cp3L577.

For questions, please email salasdelibros@gmail.com or any of the project Co-Directors, Carol Brochin (cbrochin@arizona.edu), Desiree Cueto (dwcueto@arizona.edu) or Kathy Short (shortk@arizona.edu).

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Digging Deeper into Migration Stories through MultiModal Text Sets

By Carol Brochin, Leah Durán, and Kathy G. Short, University of Arizona

This past summer, faculty in the College of Education at the University of Arizona virtually hosted a seminar for K-12 teachers sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities. Drawing teachers from across the U.S., we looked at the histories and movements of people in what is now Arizona and considered ways to invite students of all ages into our inquiries. Our institute, We the People: Migrant Waves in the Making of America, challenged the perception that migration is a recent negative phenomenon. This two-week virtual institute explored the continuous waves of migration in the U.S. through a case study of Arizona, the last continental state added to the union. We were particularly concerned with the stories often left out of traditional narratives of U.S. history, which are traditionally rooted in the thirteen colonies and so erase the experiences of Black, Indigenous, Latinx and other communities of color. Through interactions with narratives, authors, scholars and museums, our goal was for educators to gain knowledge and strategies to support their teaching by using inquiry strategies from the case study to research migrant waves in their own states.

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