Transcultural Recovery: A Teacher's Testimonio de Aprendizaje and a Writing College Class

• In Event: Writing From Latina Standpoints: From In-Between to Healing and Back

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to examine writing Testimonios de Aprendizaje as a Chicana educator at an HSI. Can writing testimonios create a transcultural recovery that represents faculty and student identity? I define transcultural recovery as the action of regaining or processing stolen or lost complexities and intersectionality of cultural identity.Testimonio as the framework and methodology offers an intersectional space as a reflective practitioner, student, Latina, and person of color. The findings indicate that discovering my mestiza consciousness created a space in the classroom to use testimonios where transcultural recovery recovered identities subtracted from the colonized educational landscape. Testimonio offers reflective teaching and learning to decolonize curriculum and pedagogy.

Author

• Amy Montoya, University of Texas - Rio Grande Valley