"An American of Color" / 191

Bootstraps: From an American Academic of Color (1983) is a very moving book. Villanueva's life is not one that you'd expect of most professors. He dropped out of school and later earned a GED, for instance. Villanueva's experiences, though, inform his critical writing. He interweaves the personal and the academic, or the private and the public, in this excerpt taken from Bootstraps.

Villanueva details his life as a Puerto Rican growing up in New York City in "An American of Color." He traces his childhood from the City to his position as a professor in a major university, illustrating inequities in society along the way. When you read this piece pay attention to his struggle to maintain his cultural identity through constant self-evaluation. For instance, Villanueva points out key problems in education today:

• teaching towards standardized tests, according to Villanueva, can lead to student success;
• the literary canon should include more works by minority and ethnic authors;
• the canon should not favor one gender or race;
• students should be encouraged to question authority;
• teachers should demonstrate differences and similarities in literacy practice and allow students the opportunity to investigate them open-mindedly; and
• life experience can positively change the interpretation of different readings.

Two websites you might review as you get started reading and critically investigating "An American of Color," include a review in The Journal of Advanced Composition (http://jac.gsu.edu/jac/15.1/Reviews/1.htm), and the report of a teacher in a journal called Inquiry, taking an active stance to education in her classroom (http://www.br.cc.va.us/vcca/inquiry-fall99/i-42-salmon.html). The companion critical readings offer additional perspectives.