Escribiendo Para Vivir/Writing to Live: Latina Adolescent Girls and Their Parents Writing, Resisting, and Rising

• In Event: 35.075 - Writing Our Truths: Culturally Sustaining Writing as Disruptive Intervention in a Post-Truth Era

Abstract

This presentation illuminates the voices, stories and ways of knowing of four Latina adolescent girls, Blanca, Elizabeth, Rocky and Reyna, as they participated alongside their mothers and fathers, Alma, Rose, Valente and Samuel, in [Program Name] a creative writing workshop. [Program Name] was a family engagement space created with and for Latina adolescent girls (grades 7-12) and their parents, that invited them to draw, write and share stories from their lived realities (Author, 2018a). Workshops were designed to open space for the intergenerational exchange of stories, knowledges and experiences within a state in the southwestern United States with a history of oppressive anti-Latinx policies, (Abrego & Menjívar, 2011), including an ethnic studies ban (Cammarota & Aguilera, 2012) and mandated English-only policies (Garcia, Lawton, & De Figueiredo, 2012), on a micro-level, and “fake news” and rhetorical of the current administration at the macro level.
To understand [Program Name], the Latina adolescent girls and parents who participated in this co-constructed space, and the ways they performed and self- authored their lives through writing and art, I draw upon Holland, Lachicotte, Skinner and Cain’s concept of “figured worlds” (1998). According to Holland et. al. (1998) a figured world is “a socially and culturally constructed realm of interpretation in which particular characters and actors are recognized, significance is assigned to certain acts, and particular outcomes are valued over others” (p. 52). Within the space of [Program Name], in which Latina girls and their parents, came together to create, write and share of themselves with one another, workshops served as a “figured world” wherein girls, parents and facilitators could collectively dream, imagine and (re)imagine ourselves and our worlds -- together. The concept of figured worlds is important in considering the ways that Latina girls and their parents are positioned in society in general, and within schools specifically, at the intersections of race, class, gender and immigration status (Urrieta, 2007).
As a participant observer (Spradley, 2016), I wrote and worked alongside families to conduct a case study (Yin, 2014) of a six-week series of [Program name] workshops. Drawing upon field notes, girls’ and parents’ writing and art, interview transcripts and video recording of workshops, I provide insights into the how within the figured world of [Program Name] girls and their parents used writing, artwork and the sharing of stories from their lived realities to author and define themselves in ways that contradict assigned scripts and stereotypes (Kinloch, 2017). Pedagogical and theoretical implications include the urgency of co-constructing humanizing family engagement spaces (Gallo, 2017) that are culturally sustaining (Paris & Alim, 2017) by centering the voices, stories and cultural and linguistic resources (Yosso, 2005) of Latinx families, in which to build community and mobilize strength and resources (Author, 2018b) to truly work alongside families to counter deficit discourses and work in solidarity. [Program Name] provides a concrete example of the ways that writing, storytelling, art and being together can serve as powerful intervention for working with and for Latina girls and their parents that honor their literacies.

Author

• Tracey Terece Flores, The University of Texas at Austin