Acts of Translation: Sonia Duprez

Acts of Translation: Sonia Duprez is the fifth in a series of collaborative books from Big Jump Press devoted to translation and communication. Text for this project was gathered, edited, and recombined by Sarah Bryant from a series of recorded interviews conducted in 2023. Imagery for this book was collected during a visit to Sonia Duprez’ Spanish classroom in Philadelphia in the fall of 2023, and printed with a combination of polymer plates and linoleum carvings. Student drawings were made in response to the question “¿Como estás?” In this book, Sonia Duprez describes her interpretation of body language and other non-verbal cues in a classroom full of children.

Sonia Duprez has worked professionally in education since 2003. She began her career with the New York City Teaching Fellows, an accelerated accreditation program designed to recruit teachers to high-needs public schools. She earned a M.Ed in Bilingual Education from the City College of New York in Harlem while teaching Spanish and bilingual kindergarten full-time in the South Bronx. Duprez moved to Philadelphia, pa in 2005, when she began her work in Quaker education. She has been a lead elementary teacher in almost every grade, and recently made a career move to teach Spanish in the elementary grades. She is currently working on programming that promotes cultural competency, de-colonized perspectives, language-loving and a fuller understanding of the diaspora or Latinidad.