Description
Illustrates how the children of immigrants use art to grapple with issues of citizenship, state violence, and belonging
Young immigrant children often do not have the words to express how their lives are shaped by issues of immigration, legal status, and state-sanctioned violence. Yet they are able to communicate its effects on them using art. Based on ten years of work with immigrant children as young as six years old in Arizona and California- and featuring an analysis of three hundred drawings, theater performances, and family interviews-Silvia Rodriguez Vega provides accounts of children's challenges with deportation and family separation during the Obama and Trump administrations. While much of the literature on immigrant children depicts them as passive, when viewed through this lens they appear as agents of their own stories. The volume provides key insights into how immigrant children in both states presented creative, out-of-the-box, powerful solutions to the dilemmas that anti-immigrant rhetoric and harsh immigration laws present. Through art, they demonstrated a righteous indignation against societal violence, dehumanization, and death as a tool for navigating a racist, anti-immigrant society. When children are the agents of their own stories, they can reimagine destructive situations in ways that adults sometimes cannot, offering us alternatives and hope for a better future. At once devastating and revelatory, Drawing Deportation provides a roadmap for how art can provide a safe and necessary space for vulnerable populations to assert their humanity in a world that would rather divest them of it.Author: Silvia Rodriguez Vega
Publisher: New York University Press
Published: 02/14/2023
Pages: 232
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.95lbs
Size: 8.90h x 5.90w x 0.90d
ISBN13: 9781479810451
ISBN10: 1479810452
BISAC Categories:
- Political Science | Public Policy | Immigration
- Social Science | Anthropology | Cultural & Social
- Education | Arts in Education
About the Author
Silvia Rodriguez Vega is an Assistant Professor at University of California, Santa Barbara, in the Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies.