Conventional scholarship on written communication positions the Western alphabet as a precondition for literacy. Thus, pictographic, non-verbal writing practices of Mesoamerica remain obscured by representations of lettered speech. This book examines how contemporary Mestiz@ scripts challenge alphabetic dominance, thereby undermining the colonized territories of "writing." Strategic weavings of Aztec and European inscription systems not only promote historically-grounded accounts of how recorded information is expressed across cultures, but also speak to emerging studies on "visual/multimodal" education. Baca-Espinosa argues that Mestiz@ literacies advance "new" ways of reading and writing, applicable to diverse classrooms of the twenty-first century.

DAMIÁN BACA is assistant professor of Rhetoric & Writing, Chicano-Latino studies, and American Indian studies at the University of Arizona. Baca earned his Ph.D. from Syracuse University in 2006.