Borderland's Biliteracies Framework: A Critical Literacies Framework of Bilinguals of Color

• In Event: Fairmont Roundtable Session One
  In Roundtable Session: Borderlands Biliteracies: Centering Education on the Realities of Transfronterizx Communities (Table 12)

Abstract

Objective and Perspectives: In this presentation, we aim to (re)imagine and (re)conceptualize biliteracy outside of the white gaze (Morrison, 1994) and white-listening subject (Flores & Rosa, 2015), and propose the theoretical concept of borderland biliteracies. Drawing from decolonial perspectives, we conducted a thorough review of previous scholarship in border literacies (Degollado, et al., 2021) that disrupts conceptualizations of language and literacy that perpetuate monolingual views and standards, further emphasizing decontextualized reading and writing skills. We weave border studies (Anzaldúa, 1987), biliteracy, and critical literacies to illustrate the ways in which bilinguals of color enact and embody their multiple and colliding worlds for the purposes of reading and writing the word and world (Friere & Macedo 1987).

Methods and Evidence: Methodologically, we employed a qualitative approach to analyzing theoretical concepts alongside our previous empirical research data to build a framework that illustrates and extends on interrelated concepts about biliteracy which include: Nepantla, Border Thinking, and Bilanguaging Love.


Results: We outline the relationship between the concepts critical to the framework–Borderland biliteracies. These biliteracies are rooted in Nepantla (Anzaldúa, 1987). Nepantla, a Nahuatl term that represents the concept of in-betweenness, as the spiritual and embodied dimensions of what it means to live within the borderlands of the colonial difference. Nepantla is thus the lived dimension of intersectional exclusion and oppression that sit at the very borders of the colonial matrix of power. Nepantla’s transformative capacity lies in its ability to generate theory in the flesh, and with that, the possibility to construct something new. Coloniality necessitated that borderlands communities generate creative ways to survive and sustain their ways of being and knowing. Duality of thought from the margins of society–i.e. alternative knowledge traditions and linguistic practices or forms of expression–constitutes border thinking (Mignolo, 2000). Border thinking guides the productions and enactments of transformation that provide spaces for alternative sites of decolonial knowledges, resistance, and agency. Finally, we argue that borderlands biliteracies are sustainable through and with bilanguaging love, or the sensibilities developed through life on the margins that seek to sustain relationships in a world fractured by borders (Mignolo, 2000). Critical biliteracies are not solely about the individual, but rather the ways in which we manifest our love, for and with comunidad (community).

Scholarly Significance: A borderlands biliteracy framework brings together the concepts of Nepantla, Border thinking, Bilanguaging love, and transformation/productions (see Figure 1). These concepts are interconnected and are the necessary foundation to sustain biliteracy as a person of color facing the physical and imaginary boundaries of coloniality.

Figure 1: Borderlands Biliteracy Framework

Borderlands biliteracy framework provides an opportunity to reframe biliteracy knowledge, decentering the white gaze. It is rooted in the ways of being from border-crossers whose vision and knowledges have been nurtured and cultivated by lived and embodied experiences: collectively, with cariño, and in comunidad. This lens provides an opportunity for biliteracy to be reclaimed and reimagined for and with Borderlands bilingual communities.

Authors

• Idalia Nunez, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
  Presenting Author

• Enrique David Degollado, University of Iowa
  Presenting Author

• Claudia G. Cervantes-Soon, Arizona State University
  Presenting Author