Chicana/o, Latina/o education

When I started my dissertation work on Chicana mother-daughter pedagogies, I was looking for Chicana first-generation college students who considered their mothers to be integral to their educational success. 1 I was interested in documenting the teaching and learning practices of immigrant mothers who had little formal education but had raised high-achieving daughters who were now professors or in doctoral programs. I wanted to disrupt the narrative that Chicana immigrant mothers do not care about their children's education by showing how these mothers envisioned higher education for their daughters, despite never being part of that world themselves. This was my story after all; my mother did not attend college, yet I know that without her, I would not have gone on to pursue higher education. The daughters in my research were all raised in predominantly Latinx working-class communities in Los Angeles, and the mothers were all immigrants from Mexico. 2 They immigrated to escape poverty or abusive relationships, or to support their families financially. When I sat down with the mothers, they all spoke about the substantial role religion played in raising their daughters. Many attributed their daughters' educational success to Dios. 3 The daughters ranged in

This paper explores the educational model pioneered by prominent artist Judith Baca (b. 1946) in the 1970s to present a pluralistic and multivocal account of California’s past on The Great Wall of Los Angeles, a half-mile-long mural located in the Tujunga flood-control channel in California’s San Fernando Valley. The Great Wall of Los Angeles honors the layered histories of traditionally marginalized communities and captures the features of individuals frequently and deliberately underrepresented in mainstream histories. Baca developed her democratic approach to image making to reach and empower local Los Angeles youths mainly from underprivileged African American and Mexican American neighborhoods. During five summers, Baca, her staff, and dozens of professional artists organized hundreds of inner-city youths (aged 13-21) to produce the mural. While most scholars recognize the positive social benefits of the Great Wall of Los Angeles program for youth mural-makers, few examine the concrete ways that the Great Wall of Los Angeles project empowered local youths or the visual references they embedded into the mural. This study examines the ways that Baca’s educational strategies inspired mural makers to seize ownership of the mural project and explores the ways that Baca’s artistic pedagogy gave mural makers permission and authority to write themselves into history.

In this essay, I argue that familial development was a key concern for Chicanas, and was intertwined with their broader aims to revolutionize their communities and the rest of society along with them. The variety of claims they articulated, from reproductive rights, education, child care services, and sexual freedom bore a special relation to the development of la familia towards a more liberal, feminist, conception of it, while maintaining it as a central identity marker.
Because of this, the conception of la familia under Xicanisma was tailored specifically to their particular experiences as both Chicanas and women. Mothers were both victims and enactors of patriarchal and oppressive structures, while grandmothers offered rest from the strict gender roles enforced by mothers. Fathers were unwanted protectors of “their women” and, along with brothers, were benefactors of the patriarchy.
In a sense, Chicanas hoped to change their immediate surroundings, la familia, in order to be better equipped to fight for the Chicano cause, in a more integrated and egalitarian community which offered women the possibility of participating in their community’s struggle, while retaining their gender identity and individualism.
In this way, Xicanisma worked both at the level of the community and at the level of the individual, which is why I emphasize the importance of the (single) Chicana in the title. Each individual Chicana fought to be included in both the Chicano and the mainstream feminist narratives, which left out their particular experiences. In their journey towards gender equality, they hoped to reform the family structure, that would in turn impact their individual wellbeing as well as that of their community, so that one day there might be equality for all.

Drawing from Holland, Lachicotte, Skinner, and Cain’s (1998) identity theory, this study sought to understand how six self-identified lesbian and gay Latina/o college students negotiated their sexual and ethnic identities.  Participants identified two equally flawed dimensions, the hometown and college figured worlds, from which they sought an alternative destigmatizing space for identity negotiation.  Through the senses of freedom, security, and belonging, the participants became self-empowered to create a third figured world I term an "identity buffer"—a space governed by their individual expectations and social norms—where their identities could coexist.

generated important understandings of how Latino cultural constructs such as consejos, educación, and respeto influence Latinos' experiences in and out of schools. Rodríguez-Brown (ch. 24) further clarifies how respect for Latino cultural values can help create strong home-school partnerships with Latino families. Sanchez Muñoz and García (ch. 18) suggest a paradigm shift in thinking about minority students as "at potential" rather than "at-risk" and they posit that educators would be wise to shift their emphasis from "needs assessments" to "asset inventories" in determining how best to serve students. The majority of Handbook authors heed this call by explicitly debunking deficit explanations and highlighting Latinos' linguistic, cultural, and other strengths to which successful policies and practices must be responsive.

In this article, David G. García, Tara J. Yosso, and Frank P. Barajas examine the early twentieth-century origins of a dual schooling system that facilitated the reproduction of a cheap labor force and the marginalization of Mexicans in Oxnard, California. In their analysis of the 1930s Oxnard Elementary School District board minutes, alongside newspapers, maps, scholarly accounts, and oral history interviews, they argue that school segregation privileged Whites and discriminated against Mexicans as a form of mundane racism. The authors build on previous scholarship documenting the pervasiveness of racism in U.S. society to define mundane racism as the systematic subordination of Mexicans that occurred as a commonplace, ordinary way of conducting business within and beyond schools. Their findings complicate narratives that emphasize complete segregation in “Mexican schools,” while acknowledging the resistance of parents and the resilience of their children.

This anthology foregrounds scholarly, activist, and creative refl ections on spirit, spirituality, and "spiritual activism" (Anzaldúa 2002a) from the perspectives of Chicana, Latina, and Indigenous women. We, the coeditors Elisa Facio and Irene Lara, have been studying Chicana, Latina, and Indigenous women's spiritualities and, just as significantly, living our own spiritualities since the 1990s. Through our distinct yet interweaving paths as spiritually identified Chicana scholar-activists from working-class backgrounds, we are committed to decolonizing the academy that largely devalues or misunderstands spirituality, both as a serious academic topic and as an integral aspect of being alive. We have encountered many others who are also committed to a life of inquiry , teaching, writing, cultural activism, or social justice that values a spiritual perspective and praxis grounded in the decolonial histories, politics, and dynamic cultures of our Indigenous and mestiza/o ancestors and in solidarity with Indigenous people and people of color, across constructed "races" and "nations." Built on the supposition that spirituality often plays a decolonizing role in creating meaning, inspiring action, and supporting healing and justice in our communities, this anthology contributes to an emerging body of knowledge focused on voicing and understanding spirituality through an intersectional, interdisciplinary, and nonsectarian lens. Although they are widely perceived to be a religious or spiritual group, until recently there have been few works that address the gendered, sexualized, classed, and racialized spiritualities of Chicanas, Latinas, and Indigenous women, particularly through their own voices.

In this article, Tara Yosso, William Smith, Miguel Ceja, and Daniel Solórzano expand on their previous work by employing critical race theory to explore and under- stand incidents of racial microaggressions as experienced by Latina/o students at three selective universities. The authors explore three types of racial microaggressions—inter- personal microaggressions, racial jokes, and institutional microaggressions—and consider the effects of these racist affronts on Latina/o students. Challenging the applicability of Vincent Tinto’s three stages of passage for college students, the authors explore the processes by which Latinas/os respond to racial microaggressions and confront hostile campus racial climates. The authors find that, through building community and developing critical navigation skills, Latina/o students claim empowerment from the margins.

In this article, we use testimonio as a Latina/o Critical Theory (LatCrit) methodology positioned within a Chicana feminist epistemology (Pérez Huber, 2010), to explore how race and racism has influenced our lives from graduate students to teacher educators and engaged scholars. In our testimonio co-creado , or co-created testimonio (Prieto & Villenas, 2012), we devote specific attention to how we have been directly and indirectly influenced by the work of the late Derrick Bell and Critical Race Theory (CRT), alongside Latino/a and Chicana/o Studies and Chicana feminist thought (Anzaldúa, 1987; Sandoval, 2000; Pérez, 1998). Specifically we ask, how can Bell’s work be used to conceptualize and theorize/understand the struggles of Chicanas/os, Latinas/os in academia? In this testimonio co-creado we highlight the powerful and fruitful tensions of these interconnections in addressing our curricular struggles and innovations, professional identities, and scholarly trajectories. We address Bell’s theory of race and the permanence of racism, as well as interest convergence to discuss the tensions and possibilities of personal “success” in the academy. We do so by interweaving our testimonios with CRT and LatCrit scholarship in Latino/a education.

In recent years, important advancement has been documented in the literature about the educational attainment among female Latinas. However, Latina girls and young women continue to face significant challenges throughout their education journeys that are not always evident in statistical analyses. This chapter aims to map out a range of sources of oppression at the intersections of transnational constructions of gender, race, class, language, and citizenship that continue to shape the educational trajectories and life prospects for Latina youth and that manifest in ways that are not always accounted in the literature about educational outcomes. More importantly, the chapter brings critical attention to the nuanced forms of agency that Latina youth enact as they navigate the material and discursive conditions of their daily realities that are often erased or obscured under the “at-risk” labels. The chapter concludes with a case study to illustrate the ways in which both oppression and agency emerge in the life of one Latina teen, urging educators to examine their own expectations, constructions, and discourses and to reimagine the ways in which they may collaborate with these youth to foster, justice, transformation, and a more humanizing education.

This policy brief highlights the
trajectories of Latina/o students who
test into developmental coursework
at California community colleges
and brings attention to the obstacles
created by these courses. The
authors use quantitative data from
the Basic Skills Progress Cohort Tracking Tool (Progress Tracker)
from the California Community
Colleges Chancellor’s Office. They
examine the placement, course
attempts, and course success
numbers for Latinas/os. Based
on the findings, the authors
offer suggestions for improving
Latinas/os’ developmental
education completion rates.

This Chicana Critical Feminist Testimonio reveals a Mexican/Mexican- American Ethic of Care particular to the needs and strengths of Mexicana/o students and Testimonios of struggle, survival informing one Mexican/ Mexican-American female educator of predominantly Mexican/Mexican- American students. This work, theoretically framed within Chicana and Black Feminisms, is part of a larger ethnographic study conducted through multiple methods. Findings reveal Rosa’s Mexicana/Mestiza Ethic of Care, a (re)incarnated social justice revolution carrying education as ethical imperative toward uplift. Findings have implications for all educators to protect and sustain ongoing struggles for equity and dignity for Mexicana/o youth and all those on the margins of schooling.

Analyzing the Chicana/o student movement at the University of Washington (UW) from 1968 to 1975, this essay argues that affirmative action deserves greater recognition as a catalyst of the Chicana/o movement and that this theme can be productively explored in settings beyond the US Southwest. Beginning with an account of the origins of a student-driven affirmative action program at UW, I trace its effects in the recruitment of farmworker youth from eastern Washington to enroll at the university, their politicization as supporters of the United Farm Workers grape boycott, and their rapid emergence as leaders of the Movimiento in Washington State. In claiming their right to the campus, Chicana/o students sought affirmative action not merely in student and faculty recruitment, but in the transformation of the university to promote social justice in their communities. Through their activism, which linked campus issues to farmworker struggles and to the wider Movimiento, students developed a newly politicized understanding of their Chicana/o identity, which in turn served as the basis for continued organizing and social justice demands.

This qualitative dissertation study explores the various roles and practices that classroom teachers can enact in their work to increase the college going rates of working- class Latina/o youth. Utilizing Stanton-Salazar’s (2011) empowerment social capital theoretical framework, this study examined the role and identity development, practices, and challenges of 14 classroom teachers whose college-focused work aimed to increase their students’ social capital, resources, and opportunities for higher education. In addition, it also examined those cases when educators extended their work to actively counter the inequitable schooling conditions and structures facing working-class Latina/o youth (i.e., empowerment agents). Utilizing interviews, document collection, and journal responses, some of the emerging themes included: the role that teachers’ personal identities play in their practices for college access and social justice, the lack of funding and resources for students’ college planning prompting educators’ efforts, and the various challenging schooling structures and policies testing teacher sustainability. Policy and practice recommendations aim to increase the development of resource-generating and empowering relationships between working-class Latina/o youth and their teachers, as well as to develop structures and environments required for teacher sustainability. Recommendations for further research are also provided.

JOLLAS (Journal of Latino-Latin American Studies) Special Issue
Guest Editors: Cinthya M. Saavedra & Michelle S. Perez.
Contributors:
Dolores Calderon, Claudia Cervantes-Soon, Judith Flores Carmona, Karleen Pendleton Jimenez and Ruth Trinidad Galvan.

The articles in this special issue of JOLLAS center critical methodologies in educational research. As Chicana/Latina scholars have reimagined pedagogical spaces, so too have they reinvented the methodologies needed for such rearticulations. The Chicana/Latina contributors help us navigate methodological landscapes and offer critical conversations needed in qualitative research. In particular the scholars focus on anticolonial conversations, critical ethnography, theories and methods of the flesh, critical reflexivity, Chicana feminist film-making methodologies as well as push us to consider the global North/South divide by decolonizing conocimiento and forming global alliances.

The Xicana Sacred Space resulted from an effort to develop a framework that would center the complexities of Chicana ontology and epistemology as they relate to social action projects in our communities. Claiming indigenous roots and ways of knowing, the Xicana Sacred Space functions as a decolonizing tool by displacing androcentric and Western linear notions of research in favor of a Mestiza consciousness (Anzaldúa, 1999).

To address the benefits of cultural intuition on qualitative inquiry, we highlight four qualitative studies and examine how we, as Chicana scholars, embrace the role cultural intuition plays in our individual studies. In this article, we illustrate how cultural intuition informs our use of Freirean generative themes within our methodological approach. For an in-depth illustration, we each highlight one of the four tenets of cultural intuition and explain how that tenet advises our methodological tools -such as family photographs as archive, student-generated photographs, teacher-generated artifacts, and community archival sources -to create Freirean generative themes with our participants and highlight the wealth present in Communities of Color.

Gonzalez, Alejandra, Irene Lara, Carolina Prado, Sophia Rivera, and Carmen Rodriguez (authors listed in alphabetical order represent equal authorship). “Passing the Sage: CuranderaScholarActivists in Academia.” Chicana/Latina Studies: The Journal of Mujeres Activas en Letras y Cambio Social. v. 15, n. 1 (fall 2015): 110-55.
This collaborative essay addresses the theories and practices of the “CuranderaScholarActivist” (CSA) femtoring seminar, a holistic undergraduate research program founded in 2009 by Professor Irene Lara through the Faculty-Student Mentoring Program at San Diego State University. Drawing on Anzaldúan autohistoria and other Chicana/Latina testimonio methods, the authors (four student participants and the faculty “femtor”) reflect on their experiences in the CSA program, which is geared toward first generation Chicana, Latina, and Indigenous women college students. They explore what it means to be a CuranderaScholarActivist and the potential of CSA praxis as a liberatory tool to decolonize and heal themselves and academia. The CSA’s vision of a decolonized academy insists that the production of knowledge be participatory for the purpose of social justice and collective liberation. Using feminist pedagogies and Chicana/o, Latina/o, and Indigenous theories, the CSA model addresses the need for further holistic femtoring models that acknowledge the bodymindspirithearts of students and faculty.

Moved by Gloria Anzaldúa's (1990) call for nueva teorías 1 , in this research brief I outline what I refer to as muxerista portraiture. As a meXicana 2 (pronounced me-chi-cana) scholar who examines Mexicana/Chicana mother-daughter pedagogies, I argue for the partnership of portraiture (Lawrence-Lightfoot, 1983) and Chicana/Latina feminist theory (CLFT) (Delgado Bernal & Elenes, 2011). My goal is to offer a thoughtful and deliberate methodology that borrows from these two theories and not an alternative or replacement for one or the other. I begin by briefly discussing what portraiture and CLFT are and how I bridge the two, I then highlight the five contours of muxerista portraiture, and conclude with areas for future research.

Drawing from two in‐depth qualitative studies, we used a sociocultural lens for a cross‐case analysis examining how Latin@s’ participation in schools is affected by ideological messages that subordinately position them in terms of their ethnicity, class, and immigrant status. We identified a range of dynamic responses to the school’s normalization pressures: (1) echando ganas [giving it their all] in school while labeled ‘at risk’, (2) living through school with perceived success, and (3) threatening the school’s normalization process. This paper emphasizes the need to create inclusive spaces that acknowledge, reward, and support the efforts and agency of students and parents that go beyond school‐prescribed normalization practices.

This article addresses the reasons why too few social workers are prepared for practice with first- and second-generation Latino indi- viduals and families, primarily from Mexico and Central America. To do so, the authors explore the social and contextual reasons for this paucity. Social risks and vulnerabilities of Latinos are assessed and are connected to social work’s mission to serve at-risk populations. The authors make suggestions for steps the profession can take to increase the number and quality of social workers who are equipped to practice with this growing population

In this essay, I challenge unreflective linguistic indexation of Latino academia; specifically, the suppression of the inflexion “o” in generic nouns (as in Latinx) and appropriation of Nahuatl nouns. To do so, I analyze these two linguistic features in terms of historical macro- and micro-linguistic levels and, for the case of Latinx, I situate this socio-cultural practice in relation to Spanish morphology and semantics. Finally, I question if these linguistic practices of Latino (Latinx) scholars enhance group identity and social justice or, on the contrary, if this linguistic indexation merely isolates a selective group of U.S.-centered scholars.

This chapter analyzes the historical forces shaping contemporary manifestations of institutionalized racism that are experienced by Latinas/os in schools.  Deconstructing evolving ideologies of deficit thinking, the work explains the powerful impact of racial microaggressions and racial battle fatigue experienced by Latina/o students today, with an overview of ways in which specific tools can be used to help students transform these experiences.

In Martin Urbina (ed.), Twenty-First Century Dynamics of Multiculturalism: Beyond Post-Racial America (pp. 153-170)

This article examined a group of Latina students studying abroad. It highlighted ways in which identity manifests itself for Latinas in different contexts. It used counterstories, stories of historically marginalized groups in education. Primary findings were cultural dissonance; a reflection of past, present, and privilege; and the critical consumption of knowledge. Institutional suggestions to increase participation of students of color in study abroad programs and recommendation of effective practices are provided.