ABSTRACT

This chapter presents a case study of the literacy practices of two adults–Lara and Enrique—who both came to the United States as refugees from Cuba seeking a better life. It explores the ways in which literacy and language intersect and negotiated by immigrants such as Lara and Enrique. Lara arrived with her husband and two small children in 1997; Enrique arrived in 2002, only 1½ years before the data collection for this study. Both were able to come to the “promised land” because they won immigration visas in a lottery set up by the Cuban and US government in 1994. People were hungry especially for translations of classic world literature and contemporary Western suspense novels that offered a view of envied modernity absent in the communist world. Lara’s and Enrique’s accounts point to the suggestion that their immigrant experiences as regards their English literacy practices vary and appear to be influenced heavily by family literacy practices in their native countries.