“Día a día”: Puerto Rican Mothering for Hopeful Futures

• In Event: Promising Scholarship in Education Research: Dissertation Fellows and Their Research

Abstract

“Día a día”: Puerto Rican Mothering for Hopeful Futures

This project draws on critical pedagogy and feminist of color epistemologies to center displaced Puerto Rican mothers’ private acts of remembrance, resistance and agency as they struggle for their own and their families’ survival in a receiving community post-natural disaster. By creating a learning space—culture circles—that aimed to engage us in a critical cycle of problem-posing, dialogue, and problem-solving, we explored the social practice of mothering, which reflects a series of choices in the service of more hopeful futures (hooks, 1990). By sharing resources and solutions to problems we have encountered, the women in this study built a virtual space where we could mentor one another as we remembered, resisted, and enacted our agency in service of our families’ futures and our own. Through various acts, including 1) remembering and resisting microaggressions at our children’s school and/or our workplace; 2) advocating for our children’s education and well-being in schools, and; 3) focusing on long-term goals, these women work to provide families with a homeplace (hooks, 1990) to thrive and become agentic subjects rather than passive objects. This work demonstrates how the social practice of mothering is at the heart of students’ success and provides insights to better support family engagement initiatives. Finally, this work shows the power of informal learning spaces where women of color create “subversive political spaces” (hooks, 1990).

Author

• Astrid Nicholl Sambolín Morales, University of Pennsylvania