Rebel Literacy: Cuba’s National Literacy Campaign and Critical Global Citizenship

Author: Mark Abendroth

Price: $25.00
Published: December 2009
ISBN: 978-1-936117-06-2
Printed on acid-free paper

Rebel Literacy is a look at Cuba’s National Literacy Campaign of 1961 in historical and global contexts. The Cuban Revolution cannot be understood without a careful study of Cuba’s prior struggles for national sovereignty. Similarly, an understanding of Cuba’s National Literacy Campaign demands an inquiry into the historical currents of popular movements in Cuba to make education a right for all. The scope of this book, though, does not end with 1961 and is not limited to Cuba and its historical relations with Spain, the United States, and the former Soviet Union. Nearly 50 years after the Year of Education in Cuba, the Literacy Campaign’s legacy is evident throughout Latin America and the ‘Third World’. A world-wide movement today continues against neoliberalism and for a more humane and democratic global political economy. It is spreading literacy for critical global citizenship, and Cuba’s National Literacy Campaign is a part of the foundation making this global movement possible.

The author collected about 100 testimonies of participants in the Campaign, and many of their stories and perspectives are highlighted in one of the chapters. Theirs are the stories of perhaps the world’s greatest educational accomplishment of the 20th Century, and critical educators of the 21st Century must not overlook the arduous and fruitful work that ordinary Cubans, many in their youth, contributed toward a nationalism and internationalism of emancipation.

Are you going to be at the ALA Conference in Anaheim later this month?

Litwin Books / Library Juice Press will be holding a reception. I will be showing the eight books we have published so far and networking with readers and authors. I look forward to meeting you at the reception if you’re interested in our books.

I’ll be holding the reception in my regular old hotel room mega suite at the Anaheim Marriott on Saturday night, June 28th, from 8pm to 11pm. I’ll be serving wine and cheese for you (until I run out). I expect to have some materials you can take back to your library if you are into collecting that sort of thing at conferences, and as always, I’ll be networking like a madman.

I don’t have a room number yet at the Anaheim Marriott, but you can ask for Rory Litwin at the main desk, and they should give you the room number.

Looking forward to seeing you…

Libraryjuicepress.com and Libr.org were down and out for several days due to e-gremlins. Service has been restored.

I decided to do something a little different with the blog. Let me know if you have seen this elsewhere. In my right-hand sidebar I’ve added a section of book authors, which links to searches for their books on Red Light Green. I read books, so why should I link only to blogs and online content? The authors I list are ones whom I like and who have informed my discussion.

Two of the links are actually not to Red Light Green but to publishers’ websites. These are authors with just one book. I am a bit frustrated with Red Light Green, because the linked searching function gives different results than the same search expression input into their search box. If you search on the site you get broader results with more books included than if you encode the search into a URL. And I’m not talking about false drops; I’m talking about books I’m interested in. For that reason I left out James Danky. Compare that linked search with one you try yourself for his name on the site. The linked search does not include his Alternative Materials in Libraries, which is now fairly obscure, but a search for his name using their search box does.

Leave comments to tell me about authors that progressive librarians should read, and a little about why! Library Juice Concentrate is going to have a bibliography for that purpose, and I’d like to expand it.

Some readers will be happy about this: I’ve changed the settings so you don’t need to register in order to comment. We’ll see how it goes.

It took a little longer than anticipated, but as I said I would do in my parting message in Library Juice, the e-zine, last September, I have revived the publication as a blog. The delay, for those who’ve been waiting eagerly, has had to do with other projects taking precedence, as well as a desire to take a break.

Among the other projects is Library Juice Press, the publishing company. The book projects are coming along, and I will share information about them here as I have things to announce. I’m hoping to have four titles available for purchase by the start of this year’s Fall semester.

As you know if you’ve been a reader of Library Juice in the past, I’m getting into blogging with a degree of ambivalence, as I have taken issue with certain aspects of blogging culture. Wanting to avoid becoming what I hate, but to continue Library Juice in a contemporary way, I’ve set up a set of rules that I hope to stick to as I go, a sort of a blogging pledge.

Because of some bad experiences on LISNews I was initially planning not to allow reader comments on this blog. I have a sense, and we will see if this turns out to be true, that heavy readers of blogs are a different group than the group who subscribed to and appreciated Library Juice, so I’m not sure if it’s the audience I’m used to that will be reading and commenting here. I’m allowing comments in the hopes that former Library Juice readers will find this blog and participate. Denizens of the internet, even now that the internet has become so ubiquitous, still skew (on average) in the direction of technolibertarianism, and Library Juice decidedly does not. So, we’ll see how it goes.

Anyway, I’m glad to be back with you.