Title: Mogadishu on the Mississippi
Subtitle: Language, Racialized Identity, and Education in a New Land
Series Title: The Language Learning Monograph Series
In Mogadishu on the Mississippi, Martha Bigelow brings together five years of interdisciplinary research within the Somali community in Minnesota. The community is a little-studied population in Minnesota, which is Somali, Muslim, refugee, and under-schooled. In the book, she investigates the language learning, multiple literacy development, and schooling and community experiences of the community and draws upon theories from the fields of applied linguistics, second language acquisition, education, and sociology.
Bigelow's research uses a range of epistemological frames to explore central and contemporary problems that tie language learning to racialized, religious, and gendered identities. It also examines the broader experiences of minoritized and under-schooled youth in high school and their integration into the dominant society.
In this illuminating study, Bigelow offers scholars in applied linguistics an argument for the centrality of sociopolitical contexts in language learning and for the integration of advocacy and research.
Table of Contents
Series Editor's Foreword.
1. Engaged Scholarship in the Somali Communities of Minnesota.
2. Orality and Literacy within the Somali Diaspora.
3. Multilingualism and Multiliteracy among Somali Adolescent Girls.