Nuestros Cuentos: Fostering a Comunidad de Cuentistas Through Collaborative Storytelling With Latinx and Indigenous Youth

Abstract

This article outlines the emergence and ongoing sustainability of Nuestros Cuentos, a community and youth-oriented storytelling project that highlights the stories and histories of Latinx and Indigenous youth in children’s literature. By fostering what the authors call a Comunidad de Cuentistas (Community of Storytellers), Nuestros Cuentos provides a space for Latinx and Indigenous youth to write, edit, and publish a collaborative book of stories that is then distributed into their own community. Following the calls of researchers like Riojas Clark, Bustos Flores, Smith, and Gonzalez (2015), Nuestros Cuentos aims to increase the representation of multicultural literature for children, specifically by encouraging Latinx and Indigenous youth to write stories that represent their own experiences, histories, and interests.