Community Contexts for Literacy Development of Latina/o Children: Contrasting Case Studies

This article examines language and literacy use in two communities in which Spanish-speaking children live and attend school, documenting the confounding of socioeconomic status, ethnic density, and access to Spanish language and print. Drawing on community observations and interviews with parents and children in a yearlong ethnographic study, we examine issues of heritage language maintenance and loss in settings in which children are receiving bilingual instruction but in which the communities provide substantially different support for Spanish.