A Conversation of Healing: Bringing the Sacred Stories of the Americas into US Classrooms
October 8, 2024 | 7:00 p.m. ET
In an educational landscape that increasingly bans the stories of historically marginalized and othered communities, this online discussion asks us to think about how the power of stories can connect, guide, and heal. The Sea Ringed World: Sacred Stories of the Americas is a collection of the stories that have shaped Mesoamerica. Translated into English by David Bowles, these sacred stories are, in the words of author María García Esperón, “big magic!” Join the authors and teachers as they discuss and examine these stories, not as myth, but as stories of life, death, and learning to draw from the collective memory of the ancestors of the Americas.
This event is hosted by NCTE and NCTE’s Secondary Section. Registration is open to NCTE members.
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FEATURED GUESTS
David Bowles is an associate professor and coordinator of the English education program at the University of Texas Río Grande Valley. He is the award-winning Chicano author and translator of forty books, among them They Call Me Güero, My Two Border Towns, Ancient Night, The Prince & the Coyote, and The Sea-Ringed World: Sacred Stories of the Americas. In 2019, David co-founded the hashtag and activist movement #DignidadLiteraria, which has negotiated greater Latinx representation in publishing. In 2021, he helped launch Chispa, the Latinx imprint of Scout Comics, for which he serves as editor-in-chief. He is the new president of the Texas Institute of Letters.
María García Esperón was born in Mexico City in 1964. She studied Humanities at the Sor Juana’s Cloister and Classics at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. Her first novel, The Disc of Time, was awarded the Barco de Vapor 2004 literary prize by Ediciones SM and the National Council for Culture and Arts (CONACULTA). Her poetry collection, Tigers of the Other Night, won the Hispano-American Children’s Poetry Prize, organized by the Foundation for Mexican Letters and the Fondo de Cultura Económica. Her novel, Dear Alexandria, was likewise awarded the Latin-American Young Adult Norma Prize in 2007. Her novel, Dido to Aeneas, was chosen by the International Board on Books for Young People to integrate its 2016 honor roll in the ‘Best story for young readers’ category, and she received the Cuatrogatos prize in 2020 with her novel, The Shroud of Helena. She has written more than seventy books, such as Forever Athens, The Ring of Caesar, The Oar of Odysseus, The Tomb of Alexander, and Land of Pyramids. Her latest publications include The Shroud of Helena, Tales from Atlantis, and a series of literary dictionaries of Classical, American, and Asian myths. She has been published in Mexico, Spain, Cuba, Ecuador, the US, and Colombia.
Dr. Mónica Baldonado Ruiz is an assistant professor of literacy and the director of the San Diego State Literacy Center at San Diego State University. She believes that the power of stories connects us to others around us. She has used her own voice as an advocate for students and to celebrate the communities of those students. Her research interests include literacy education, culturally sustaining pedagogy, equitable practices of teaching writing and Lat-Crit theory of education, specifically testimonio.
Her most recent publications, Stories of Self, Stories of Us: Bearing Witness and Writing Testimonios, and From Silence to Testimonio: Adolescent Latinas Agency in Writing, highlight the importance of personal, community writing, testimonio, and oral history in the secondary writing curriculum. Her work with the National Writing Project as a co-director of the Central Arizona Writing Project, which resulted in her establishment of the Cuentos writing workshops as well as the Pláticas reading and writing group, have prepared her to develop and implement professional development opportunities that highlight the teacher teaching teachers model.