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Growing up Bilingual: Puerto Rican Children in New York

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Zentella is an anthro-political linguist describing language use in a New York Puerto Rican neighborhood. She uses rich description and interview transcripts to illustrate the issues surrounding the use of English, Spanish, and "Spanglish" in a group of informants spanning two generations. This book focuses equally well on the anthropological, the political/social, and the linguistic aspects of language use and the decisions the informants make regarding their language use. Growing Up Bilingual is an important book examining some of the complexities of linguistic code-switching in bilingual populations.

Provides a comprehensive perspective on childhood bilingualism. It is a text for academics, teachers, administrators, sociolinguists, linguists, anthropologists and parents who are interested in learning about life with two languages in a small network within an urban environment.

The text is an excellent source and platform of research as it presents incisive data and colorful narratives of children's speech. Discussions on bilingualism at home and in the community, language loyalty, code-switching are among the many issues covered in the text. It is a must as we enter the millenium with a new perspective on multilingualism and language diversity in the U.S.A. or any part of the world.