Tracing Activist Genealogies in Latina Children’s Librarianship

Abstract

Tracing Activist Genealogies in Latina Children's LibrarianshipWe wanted an all-inclusive name that would represent a wide array of cultures within a culture.After many more names were scribbled on a cocktail napkin, after our creativity began to wane, Toni asked, "Oralita, Sandrita, have you ever heard of Pura Belpré?Well mujeres, let me tell you who she was.She was a librarian, the first Latina librarian of the New York Public Library, a puppeteer, she was Borinqueña, a folklorist, a writer, and she believed in library services to Latino children" … Our hearts paused.We found the path that Pura started on in the 1920s, and we began walking … -Sandra Ríos Balderrama "¡Celebración!The Tenth Anniversary Celebration of 1 the Pura Belpré Award."On June 25, 2006, upon the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the Pura Belpré Award for outstanding Latino/a children's literature, Sandra Ríos Balderrama told an audience of the American Library Association (ALA) annual conference about the night she and the co-conspirators of the Pura Belpré Award decided upon its name.This story points to the quotidian landscapes and sociocultural circumstances that shape and constitute activist imperatives of Latina children's librarians.This essay examines the activist imperatives of three Latina librarians: Pura Belpré, who revolutionized bilingual children's library service in 1920s Harlem, New York, and Sandra Ríos Balderrama and Oralia Garza de Cortés, who in 1996 established the Belpré Award.The story told above also illustrates how Latina librarians have 1 R í os Balderramas's remarks in honor of the tenth anniversary of the Pura Belpré Award were first presented at the American Library Association annual conference in 2006, and were later published in the Association for Library Services to Children (ALSC) journal as well as the 2006 winter newsletter of REFORMA-The National Association to Promote Library and Information Services to Latinos and the Spanish-Speaking.See Ríos Balderrama's essay "¡Celebración!The Tenth Anniversary Celebration of the Pura Belpré Award.

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