Racially Microaffirming the Self and Community: Chicanas/Latinas Employing a Critical Race Feminista Epistolary Praxis

• In Event: Rupturing the White Gaze: Centering Chicana/Latina Feminista Methodologies and Epistemologies in Qualitative Research

Abstract

Objectives
Women of Color (WOC) have an expressive history of producing creative writings, in the form of personal letters, to document their stories of structural marginalization, chronicle their resistance stories, and articulate their propositions for tangible change (Anzaldúa, 1981; Cisneros, 2018; Lorde, 2012; Collins, 2016). Building on this racially microaffirmative (Solórzano & Perez-Huber, 2020) tradition, this paper uplifts a Critical Race Feminista Epistolary Praxis (CRFEP; Escobedo & Camargo Gonzalez, 2022), a writing-based methodological intervention nestled within anti-racist and social justice lineages. It argues, a CRFEP fosters opportunities for WOC to communicate their resistance against the historical legacies and contemporary manifestations of racialized and gendered oppression and can therefore be understood as a racially microaffirmative methodological tool. Because it calls on Chicanas/Latinas to document their value and shared humanity through a critical writing practice, this methodology affirms WOC ways of knowing and being. By drawing on lessons learned from the empirical application of a CRFEP, this paper expands our theoretical understanding of how racial microaffirmations can be both nurtured and imparted as part of a critical research praxis.

Theoretical Framework & Methodology
This paper draws theoretical inspiration from Critical Race Theory in Education (CRT) and Chicana/Latina Feminisms (CLF) to inform a Critical Race Feminista Epistolary Praxis. A CRFEP is guided by five principles which characterize its application. The contours foreground that a CRFEP: (1) Is theoretically grounded in a Critical Race Feminista tradition; (2) Honors research collaborators as co-writers by uplifting their creative productions in a move to center WOC perspectives; (3) Is a racially microaffirmative (Solorzano & Perez-Huber, 2020) tool that centers a care imperative and offers a textual space for potential healing; (4) Calls on Chicana/Latina women to pen themselves and their everyday life experience into existence for the purposes of historical recovery; and (5) Embodies a humanistic praxis sustained by researcher reciprocity, reflexivity, and vulnerability.

Data Sources
This paper draws data from two studies that examine the teaching and learning processes that take shape between 19 Chicanas/Latinas who attended higher education institutions in the U.S. Qualitative data presents as 17 individual pláticas (Fierros & Delgado Bernal, 2016), 11 group pláticas, and 46 epistolary writings.

Findings & Scholarly Significance
Findings reveal a CRFEP is a racially microaffirmative (Solórzano & Perez Huber, 2020) methodological tool that creates space for Chicanas/Latinas to respond to everyday racism, and other interlocking systems of oppression by writing back to those individuals, institutions, and practices that uphold the systematic subjugation of Communities of Color. While they document, through letter writing, their experiences of exclusion and resistance, Chicanas/Latinas engage in an explicit practice of racially affirmative care for the self, and for community. In line with the AERA 2024 call for producing research aimed at “Dismantling Racial Injustice and Constructing Educational Possibilities,” this paper details how researchers can harness the racially microaffirmative affordances of a Critical Race Feminista Epistolary Praxis in order to challenge the historical and contemporary marginalization of Communities of Color within the context of white supremacy.

Author

• Cindy R. Escobedo, University of California - Los Angeles