"I Try to Read to Them in Both Languages": Bilanguaging Love Through Bi/Literacy

• In Event: Multilingual Educators Shaping Culture, Identity, and Literacies Across Contexts

Abstract

In this qualitative study, I employ Mignolo’s (2000) concept of bilanguaging love to illustrate how fronteriza bilingual maestras think between epistemologies for reading and writing their world. Utilizing Chicana feminist epistemologies to inform my data collection methods, I gathered the life stories of six (6) fronteriza maestras through pláticas, convivios, and classroom observations to better understand how their lives inform their literacy ideologies. While there is an inherent discourse that privileges functional/autonomous literacy practices, their stories and classroom observations also demonstrated other ways of knowing through abuelita epistemologies which undergirds their teaching. In other words, bi/literacy is not only a way of reading and writing between languages but a ways of living between epistemologies.

Author

• Enrique David Degollado, University of Iowa