Decolonizing Spirit in the Classroom con Anzaldúa

University of Arizona Press Chapter Title: Decolonizing Spirit in the Classroom con Anzaldúa Chapter Author(s): SUSY ZEPEDA and Martha R. Gonzales Book Title: Voices from the Ancestors Book Subtitle: Xicanx and Latinx Spiritual Expressions and Healing Practices Book Editor(s): LARA MEDINA, MARTHA R. GONZALES Published by: University of Arizona Press. (2019) Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvq4c07x.137 JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms University of Arizona Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Voices from the Ancestors This content downloaded from 169.237.45.73 on Mon, 13 Apr 2020 21:16:51 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Decolonizing Spirit in the Classroom con Anzaldúa Susy Zepeda Anzaldúa’s opening of the spiritual borderlands has inspired my pedagogy to engage with colonization and decolonization, to open space for Indigenous forms of spirituality, ceremony, and sacredness with Xicanx, Chicanx, and Latinx students. I utilize the writings of Gloria Anzaldúa in my teaching because her ceremonial writings are path openers. I usually introduce and frame courses with her essay “Now Let Us Shift . . . The Path of Conocimiento . . . Inner Work, Public Acts” or her now classic text Borderlands / La Frontera: The New Mestiza, and/or I assign “Speaking in Tongues: Letter to Third World Women Writers” from This Bridge Called My Back. I begin by telling my students about her life trajectory and how even though her nepantlera writing and theorizations are central to the formation of women-of-color feminisms, the theorization and study of the multiple manifestations of borderlands (material and nonmaterial) and their many dimensions in our lives, Xicana spirituality, decolonization, and what it means to be una de las otras, Gloria Anzaldúa, the dyke Chicana philosopher, was met with an intense amount of resistance from academic colonial heteropatriarchal logics and practitioners of this violence. I also share that Gloria transitioned to the spirit world at the age of sixty-two from complications of diabetes. Usually, students respond with anger at learning of her life struggles, next to expressing deep curiosity and compassion for her life story, and identification with some form of her path, rooted palabras, and transformative imagination. This content downloaded from 169.237.45.73 on Mon, 13 Apr 2020 21:16:51 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms DECOLONIZING SPIRIT IN THE CLASSROOM CON ANZALDÚA 373 By sharing her story and struggles, Gloria gives me permission to create a space of sanación, healing for my students and me, to be unbounded in our generosity, love, and respect for one another and the learning process as we grow and transform. Reflection and dialogue are key in this space. Tezcatlipoca. Obsidian mirror. In my Chicana/o Theory course, we begin by questioning who is given the privilege of being called a theorist or philosopher. Soon after, the students articulate that they, too, are theorists—that their lived experiences have value, as do the lives of their family and community members, and that they are carriers of knowledge. This becomes clearer as we read This Bridge Called My Back and dialogue about “theory in the flesh” while sitting in a circle. We disrespect no one, including ourselves, even when we have betrayed our spirits. We value our palabra, admit when we are wrong or have misspoken, offer our regrets to the earth, to the fire, we enter the classroom with open hearts, and we share in vulnerable ways that allow us to heal our traumas, including the violence imposed on us by university structures. We recognize the white walls that were never meant for our voices or imaginations but that now in our classroom we disrupt with our collective presence and ancestral wisdom. In many ways, the vision of This Bridge provides a guided path to come home to oneself, to bring your whole self home again, to call your spirit back by looking at the pain, fear, and trauma in the face. To check in and ask: How do you keep yourself well? How do we fully connect our hearts and minds when we are constantly experiencing and/or witnessing violence? We start to ask ourselves: How do we build a collective world where we can all be sustained? On the day we discuss section VI, otros mundos, we begin class with a guided meditation. I ask students to close their eyes and begin taking deep breaths. I ask them to imagine the world we currently inhabit. I then invite them to visualize water (i.e., river, ocean, lake) or a form of light (like the sun) so they can cleanse. Finally, I ask them to visualize otro mundo (another world), a different world from the one we currently inhabit. I ask them what it feels like, looks like, who is there. This is followed by a short write-up. In this way the radical feminist vision of This Bridge inspires a decolonial, feminist, critical pedagogy of reading the world through the third eye—visual imagination—to see possibilities of justice and transformation beyond the material world. To close out the course, I have students read sections of This Bridge Called My Back over the span of three weeks. We spend time reading aloud passages to illuminate what is meant by “theory in the flesh.” The students immediately relate This content downloaded from 169.237.45.73 on Mon, 13 Apr 2020 21:16:51 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 374 SPIRITUAL PEDAGOGY their own stories—which have usually been silenced or gone unnoticed—to the words and experiences of racism, colonialism, and heterosexism spoken of on the pages of This Bridge. I encourage dialogue among their stories and ideas so they feel connected to the process of creating theory through connection, community, and multiplicity instead of through isolation. Anzaldúa’s teachings furthermore facilitate the presence of the sacred in intellectual spaces as well as the awareness that we are embodied beings who are remembering ourselves as Indigenous people. In my Decolonizing Spirit seminar, we create a circle and altar every time we meet; we honor the original peoples of the land and the four directions. On occasion, I bring fresh herbs into the classroom, such as basil, rosemary, or sage. I offer these to align bodymindspirit, to bring a harmonious vibration back to the body and to allow for an alignment with the earth and the cosmos. In conversations with other colegas who teach in this manner, we have discussed how Gloria was a trailblazer for this form of intervention and knowledge, in creating pathways of healing and spirit in the academic world and classrooms. We have wondered whether us building a network of people and doing the work at this time to create transformative and meaningful classrooms were part of her prayer. Even if we are in different departments or institutions, we know we are many who offer our hearts to this trabajo of lifting our students to be their higher selves in their writing, stories, and visual forms of expression. Gracias a la Gloria. Tlazohcamati, Ometeotl. This content downloaded from 169.237.45.73 on Mon, 13 Apr 2020 21:16:51 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms