A graphic history featuring the true story of three friends from Brooklyn who join in the global fight against fascism In this exhilarating graphic novel about the Spanish Civil War, three American friends set off from Brooklyn to join in the fight—determined to make Spain “the tomb of fascism” for the sake of us all. Together they defy the U.S. government and join the legendary Abraham Lincoln Brigade, throw themselves into battle, and conduct sabotage missions behind enemy lines. As Spain is shattered by the savagery of combat during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), readers see the darkening clouds of the World War to come. Artist Anne Timmons has created a thrilling graphic novel in the spirit of the “war comic” genre that appeared after the attack on Pearl Harbor and the United States' entry into World War II. Drawing upon the real-life experiences of Lincoln Brigade veteran Abe Osheroff, writer Miguel Ferguson offers a lively, accessible resource based on actual events during the Great Depression and the Spanish Civil War. ¡Brigadistas! will stir the memories of older audiences who remember the Spanish Civil War as a time of unparalleled international solidarity and heartbreak, and it will expose young audiences to the passions, politics, and conflicts of a bygone era with striking contemporary relevance.

In an engrossing historical novel, the Newbery Medal-winning author of Bridge to Terebithia follows a young Cuban teenager as she volunteers for Fidel Castro’s national literacy campaign and travels into the impoverished countryside to teach others how to read. When thirteen-year-old Lora tells her parents that she wants to join Premier Castro’s army of young literacy teachers, her mother screeches to high heaven, and her father roars like a lion. Nora has barely been outside of Havana — why would she throw away her life in a remote shack with no electricity, sleeping on a hammock in somebody’s kitchen? But Nora is stubborn: didn’t her parents teach her to share what she has with someone in need? Surprisingly, Nora’s abuela takes her side, even as she makes Nora promise to come home if things get too hard. But how will Nora know for sure when that time has come? Shining light on a little-known moment in history, Katherine Paterson traces a young teen’s coming-of-age journey from a sheltered life to a singular mission: teaching fellow Cubans of all ages to read and write, while helping with the work of their daily lives and sharing the dangers posed by counterrevolutionaries hiding in the hills nearby. Inspired by true accounts, the novel includes an author’s note and a timeline of Cuban history.

The Spanish Civil War served as an ideological and physical battleground for visionary Americans wishing to combat the spread of fascism. Harry Fisher was one such idealist who became a solider in the famed Abraham Lincoln Brigade, the American contingent of international volunteers dedicated to defeating Franco's forces. ø Fisher was one of the earliest American volunteers and one of the few to participate in all the major battles. Under a barrage of shells, bombs, and bullets for eighteen months, he lost his illusions about war's efficacy in solving political issues. To this day a despondence often overwhelms him when he recalls a family photograph he found jutting from the pocket of a slain fascist soldier. His involvement taught him that up close, the dead, whether fascist soldiers or his own fallen comrades, looked alike. ø This is a war story, simply told. Yet it is also a complex story about a young man testing his ideology in the harsh realities of battle.

The author argues that modern notions of literacy can and should be informed by past successes in the field of literacy, but that there may be geographic and linguistic obstacles to knowing about them. Consequently, this book offers a view of the 1980 Cruzada Nacional de Alfabetización (CNA) or the National Literacy Crusade through the lens of a contemporary literacy professional in the United States. The goals of this book are to critically examine an important moment in the global history of literacy, celebrate the many successes of the crusade, analyze the transformative possibilities of such an endeavor, uncover the implications of the campaign for literacy today, and share an understanding of this historical event with an English-speaking audience. Practicing teachers, preservice teachers, teacher educators, and those interested in transforming education will read this book and engage in critical, collegial dialogue about what we do in schools, why we do what we do, and what might need to change in order to better meet the needs of our students, their teachers, and our democracy.

This in-depth examination of one of the most controversial episodes in U.S.-Cuba relations sheds new light on the program that airlifted 14,000 unaccompanied children to the United States in the wake of the Cuban Revolution. Operation Pedro Pan is often remembered within the U.S. as an urgent “rescue” mission, but Deborah Shnookal points out that a multitude of complex factors drove the exodus, including Cold War propaganda and the Catholic Church’s opposition to the island’s new government. Shnookal illustrates how and why Cold War scare tactics were so effective in setting the airlift in motion, focusing on their context: the rapid and profound social changes unleashed by the 1959 Revolution, including the mobilization of 100,000 Cuban teenagers in the 1961 national literacy campaign. Other reforms made by the revolutionary government affected women, education, religious schools, and relations within the family and between the races. Shnookal exposes how, in its effort to undermine support for the revolution, the U.S. government manipulated the aspirations and insecurities of more affluent Cubans. She traces the parallel stories of the young “Pedro Pans” separated from their families—in some cases indefinitely—in what is often regarded in Cuba as a mass “kidnapping” and the children who stayed and joined the literacy brigades. These divergent journeys reveal many underlying issues in the historically fraught relationship between the U.S. and Cuba and much about the profound social revolution that took place on the island after 1959. Publication of the paperback edition made possible by a Sustaining the Humanities through the American Rescue Plan grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

"This book explores the significant contributions of African American women radical activists from 1955 to 1995. It examines the 1961 case of African American working-class self-defense advocate Mae Mallory, who traveled from New York to Monroe, North Carolina, to provide support and weapons to the Negroes with Guns Movement. Accused of kidnapping a Ku Klux Klan couple, she spent thirteen months in a Cleveland jail, facing extradition. African American women radical activists Ethel Azalea Johnson of Negroes with Guns, Audrey Proctor Seniors of the banned New Orleans NAACP, the Trotskyist Workers World Party, Ruthie Stone, and Clarence Henry Seniors of Workers World founded the Monroe Defense Committee to support Mallory. Mae's daughter, Pat, aged sixteen also participated, and they all bonded as family. When the case ended, they joined the Tanzanian, Grenadian, and Nicaraguan World Revolutions. Using her unique vantage point as Audrey Proctor Seniors's daughter, Paula Marie Seniors blends personal accounts with theoretical frameworks of organic intellectual, community feminism, and several other theoretical frameworks in analyzing African American radical women's activism in this era. Essential biographical and character narratives are combined with an analysis of the social and political movements of the era and their historical significance. Seniors examines the link between Mallory, Johnson, and Proctor Seniors's radical activism and their connections to national and international leftist human rights movements and organizations. She asks the underlying question: Why did these women choose radical activism and align themselves with revolutionary governments, linking Black human rights to world revolutions? Seniors's historical and personal account of the era aims to recover Black women radical activists' place in history. Her innovative research and compelling storytelling broaden our knowledge of these activists and their political movements"--

The often bloody struggles of Central America have dominated news reports for a long time. Behind the headlines lies an enormous population of the desperately poor, and it is axiomatic that they are rendered even more powerless by widespread illiteracy. What actually counts as literacy is less clear. Archer and Costello describe some of the most exciting and innovative programmes designed to overcome the problem and how, as they worked with many of them, they discovered how varied and controversial they are. El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras, Ecuador, Mexico, Chile, Bolivia and Guatemala are all included, and for each country the authors have provided a thrilling account of the lives and circumstances of the people who both teach and learn as well as describing the varied forms that literacy teaching, even literacy itself, can take. This book is not only about literacy, but is also a guide to the societies of one of the world's most troubled regions. Originally published in 1990