Foreword: On the Power of Trans Identities
Suresh Canagarajah
Excerpt
"This is an inspiring book that demonstrates how professionals in a peripheral context with a marginalized identity take initiative to form themselves into a community, share their stories of minoritized experiences, develop professional knowledge and expertise through their interactions, and then go one step further to publish their stories so that other language teachers can also learn from their knowledge. The authors are creative, daring, and whimsical as to coin for themselves a telling group name. They call themselves the TOMATO group: it stands for Teachers Of Multilingual And Transnational Orientation. The self-ascription is a testament to the ways they draw from the power of metaphors for theorization. They consider tomato a suitable metaphor because it poses an ambiguity whether it is a fruit or a vegetable. In a similar way, the authors go beyond the binaries often used to classify language teachers, as native or nonnative in English. The book itself adopts metaphorical and creative writing to develop a reflective awareness towards professionalization. The chapters are written as narratives without references to keep the focus on personal experiences. Though the introduction suggests the important professional and scholarly objectives envisioned, the authors are daring in letting their stories do the theoretical work. I wish to use this space to highlight the scholarly context in which these stories have profound significance and implications. Hopefully, readers would process these stories from this backdrop to go beyond treating stories as mere entertainment and interpret them as knowledge" (pp. 12-13).
Citation
Canagarajah, S. (2026). Foreword: On the power of trans identities. In A. Minematsu, R. Ikeda, & M. Yazaki (Eds.), Beyond kikokushijo: Teaching English in Japan after growing up between languages and cultures (pp. 12–15). Candlin & Mynard. https://doi.org/10.47908/47/f
"This is an inspiring book that demonstrates how professionals in a peripheral context with a marginalized identity take initiative to form themselves into a community, share their stories of minoritized experiences, develop professional knowledge and expertise through their interactions, and then go one step further to publish their stories so that other language teachers can also learn from their knowledge. The authors are creative, daring, and whimsical as to coin for themselves a telling group name. They call themselves the TOMATO group: it stands for Teachers Of Multilingual And Transnational Orientation. The self-ascription is a testament to the ways they draw from the power of metaphors for theorization. They consider tomato a suitable metaphor because it poses an ambiguity whether it is a fruit or a vegetable. In a similar way, the authors go beyond the binaries often used to classify language teachers, as native or nonnative in English. The book itself adopts metaphorical and creative writing to develop a reflective awareness towards professionalization. The chapters are written as narratives without references to keep the focus on personal experiences. Though the introduction suggests the important professional and scholarly objectives envisioned, the authors are daring in letting their stories do the theoretical work. I wish to use this space to highlight the scholarly context in which these stories have profound significance and implications. Hopefully, readers would process these stories from this backdrop to go beyond treating stories as mere entertainment and interpret them as knowledge" (pp. 12-13).
Citation
Canagarajah, S. (2026). Foreword: On the power of trans identities. In A. Minematsu, R. Ikeda, & M. Yazaki (Eds.), Beyond kikokushijo: Teaching English in Japan after growing up between languages and cultures (pp. 12–15). Candlin & Mynard. https://doi.org/10.47908/47/f
Information About the Book
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Title: Beyond Kikokushijo: Teaching English in Japan After Growing Up Between Languages and Cultures
Editors: Edited by Aiko Minematsu, Risa Ikeda, and Maki Yazaki Publication date: September 20th, 2026 Read more...Read more... |