Associate Professor Mirelsie Velázquez published her much-anticipated book, Puerto Rican Chicago: Schooling the City, 1940-77, in January 2022. The book delves into the post-war migration of Puerto Rican men and women to Chicago and their children’s entry into city schools.
Chicago's Puerto Ricans pursued their educational needs in a society that constantly reminded them of their status as second-class citizens. Communities organized a media culture that addressed their concerns while creating and affirming Puerto Rican identities. Education also offered women the only venue to exercise power, and they parlayed their positions to take lead roles in activist and political circles. In time, a politicized Puerto Rican community gave voice to a previously silenced group – and highlighted that colonialism does not end when immigrants live among their colonizers.
“This book looks at the crucial role activism plays in Latinx education in a large urban area, but it breaks new ground in several different ways,” said University of Houston Professor Guadalupe San Miguel Jr. “It is the first major publication that focuses on the historical experiences of Puerto Ricans in schools in the Midwest.”
“When I walked into my own kindergarten classroom in Humboldt Park and had to deal with the mispronunciation of my name — because what kind of name is ‘Mirelsie’— but also the disinterest of my needs as a new migrant to Chicago, I inherited a lot of the consequences of these long-standing struggles that I documented in my book,” Velazquez said. “Where the shift happened for me as a Puerto Rican student in Chicago schools was when I entered the classroom of Ms. Navarro, who was a Puerto Rican educator invested in not only our learning, but also our survival in that space.”
Velazquez reconnected with Navarro years later in an oral history project where the educator explained that she knew how she was being treated as a college-educated teacher because she was Puerto Rican, so she could only imagine how these children were being treated in classroom spaces. It was a reminder to Velazquez of the importance on reinvesting in your community.
“This book really stared when I walked into that classroom many years ago,” Velazquez said. “As I entered graduate school, I was reminded of how little had been written of our history. We can’t serve our students today if we don’t understand our communities and that history. The book really came from my responsibility to understand the history that I came from but also filling in the gaps because there still is a lot more work to be done.”
To purchase the book, visit https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/?id=27qbm6qw9780252044243
