Reclaiming our Voices: Latina Youth Writers Composing Feminist Futures

• In Event: Critical Resisting: Reading, Writing, and Digital Activism

Abstract

Objective
In this paper, I center the experiences of five Latina youth writers (ages 12-18), across their participation in [Program Name] (blinded for review), a writing and art workshop, designed for Latina adolescent girls that invites them to use art, writing, and storytelling as tools of examination of self and world (Author, 2023). Drawing on oral and written testimonios and pláticas, girls’ voices illuminate their evolving Latina/Chicana feminist consciousness (Delgado Bernal, 2001) and point to the ways they composed to (re)construct and (re)define their Latina identities, cultivate positive linguistic and cultural identities, and name and act upon social injustices in their schools and worlds.

Theoretical Framework
I center research conducted by scholars who have written, created, and built alongside Black and Latina girls in creative spaces (Brown, 2013; Garcia & Gaddes, 2012; Muhammad, 2012; 2014; Winn, 2011). These spaces tend to the cultural and linguistic resources and literacies of Black and Latina girls (Player & González Ybarra, 2021) to theorize an expansive view of reading, writing, literacies, and girlhood. Informed by writing and theories of Black and Chicana feminists Gloria Anzaldúa (1983/1999), Patricia Hill Collins (2009), and Audre Lorde (2007), within [Program Name], writing and creating are conceptualized as a site of healing and transformation for Latina youth writers, specifically as “coming to voice” (hooks, 2015) and an act of “self-preservation” (Anzaldúa, 1983).

Methods
I designed this study using humanizing ethnographic methods (Paris & Winn, 2014) with five Latina youth writers across multiple years of participation in [Program Name] two-week summer workshops. Located in the Southwest, [Program Name] is facilitated by a university faculty member, teacher candidates, and classroom teachers, who all self-identify as Latina/Mexican American women. I collected girls’ written and oral testimonios, plática transcripts, field notes from workshops, and my research journal. Throughout data collection, curation, and analysis, I used constant comparative methods (Glaser & Strauss, 1967), creating categories of themes that highlighted girls’ comments, perspectives, and tensions - comparing them, revising them, and reviewing with girls throughout the process (Lincoln & Guba, 1985).

Results
I identified three themes: (Re)constructing and (re)defining Latina identities, cultivating positive linguistic and cultural identities, and naming and acting upon social injustices. Weaving together girls' words, they collectively described experiences in which they questioned monolithic images of Latina girls and women, recognized the expansive ways they performed their intersectional Latina identities, and were learning how to advocate for themselves while helping their siblings and elders to (un)learn gender scripts through pláticas and care.

Scholarly significance
As Jovita Idár penned in the 1900s - "When you educate a woman, you educate a family." Latinas are the fastest growing population in our schools. We must invest in their education - mindbodyspirit. [Program Name] and other feminist womanist-centered spaces that center the literacies, creativity, and theories of Black and Brown girls provide pedagogical and theoretical tools for educators, teacher educators, and researchers to (re)design learning spaces and craft innovative curriculum that further develops girls’ critical feminist literacies, centers their histories, and amplifies their voices.

Author

• Tracey Terece Flores, University of Texas at Austin