Brian Titley, Predatory Nuns: Sexual Abuse in North American Catholic Sisterhoods

Abstract

book affirms our untold histories as Puerto Ricans who have not received the whole truth of the colonized status the United States still holds over us over one hundred years after our conditional citizenship. This book is for any educators/teachers in Chicago as well as for Puerto Rican students everywhere. The current conversations, actions, and even legislation to teach culturally responsive pedagogy is impossible without work like Puerto Rican Chicago. This book provides both the content that can help connect students to their learning as well as insights into the process of teaching such content. It also provides a rich history of Chicago as a centre for urban education. This book can provide urban educators in any city an example of a much-needed critical account of how social issues within a city context impact education and schooling. Finally, this book is a must-read for all ethnic studies/ Latinx studies scholars: there is a gap in the field for Puerto Rican studies. We must continue to advance and centre the critical contributions of Boricua studies. This piece of scholarship is most importantly a call to action; Velázquez provides us with the blueprints we need to enact social change for Puerto Ricans in Chicago. Many of the historical dilemmas highlighted in the book are currently still lived realities. Specifically, after the election of #45 in 2016 and especially after the domestic attack on the United States government on January 6, 2021, which touted white supremacy, we are seeing an increase of racism and English-only stances on language that impact the Puerto Rican communities in Chicago and everywhere. Velázquez’s book is needed now more than ever, as we cannot forget the resistance that our ancestors and elders exhibited!