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El Lector: A History of the Cigar Factory Reader. Araceli Tinajero. Translated by Judith E Grasberg. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2010. xii and 268 pp., tables, photos, notes, and index. $50.00 Hardcover (ISBN: 978-0-292-72175-3).
Most studies on the practice and benefits of reading aloud are solidly placed in the literature on early childhood education. But is there ever a point in a person's life when they become too old to be read to? Araceli Tinajero would say no. In her compelling book on the history of the cigar factory reader, Tinajero explores the development, the diffusion, and the importance of reading aloud in cigar factories in Cuba, Spain, Mexico, Puerto Rico, the United States, and the Dominican Republic. Here, the main recipients of reading aloud were not children, but rather adults. The act of reading aloud was not initially instituted from the factory management, but rather emerged from the cigar factory workers themselves. It passed the time, certainly, but it was also a proactive form of adult education that increased global awareness through the reading of newspapers, novels, poetry, and non-fiction by the lector for an audience that, initially, was largely illiterate. El Lector illuminates a fascinating and previously neglected topic, but it does have one disappointing aspect.
The book is divided into three parts. The first traces reading aloud back to its roots in Cuban cigar factories and the diffusion of the profession to Spain. Tinajero firmly establishes the lector as a grassroots profession in Cuba. Those who read aloud were cigar rollers themselves, and for the 30 or so minutes each that they spent reading aloud, their co-workers compensated them for wages lost. Management...