Content area
Full Text
Growing up bilingual: Puerto Rican children in New York. By Ana Celia Zentella.
Oxford and Malden, MA: Blackwell. 1997. Pp. 299. Paper, 114.95. ISBN 1 55786 407 1.
This book is the result of 14 years of research into the languages and lives of 20 bilingual families living in one of the longest settled Puerto Rican neighbourhoods-'El Barrio' (East Harlem) in New York. Zentella's aim is to give a deeper understanding of why being brought up bilingual is often perceived as ". . a problem, particularly for poor Spanish-speaking communities in the United States', and how a greater comprehension of the grammatical skills bilingual's have of two languages and their knowledge of two cultures should be encouraged in order to increase the positive repercussions for both their academic and social well-being. Despite its title: Growing up bilingual, the book does not merely focus on language acquisition and development, but talks about bilingualism in the wider context of society (especially social identity), culture, economics, politics and education, and how these factors are inevitably entwined and greatly influence the course of the bilingual families' lives. One of Zentella's main preoccupations, and indeed what makes this book quite unique and insightful, is the sensitive yet powerful way in which she shows that being brought up bilingual in the impoverished conditions in which so many HispanicAmericans live is a complicated struggle between cultural identity and the nation's political policies concerning immigrant populations.
The book is split into 12 chapters. The first chapter explains the motivation behind the book and the need for...