Lighting Life’s Fire: A Reflection on Ritual, Resistance, and Rebirth

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Saturday 7:45 am
  In Roundtable Session: Curriculum as Ceremony: Storying Memory, Resistance, and Liberatory Futures

Abstract

This autobiography study explores the intersections of cultural memory, educational resistance, and decolonial healing through the lens of the Chicano Mestizo borderlands experience. Utilizing currere methodology, a strategic, transformative act, the research finds how familial rituals, specifically carne asada traditions, serve as alternative educational frameworks that challenge colonial educational narratives. Drawing on theoretical perspectives from Anzaldúa (1999, 2015), Quijano(2000), and Bernal et al.(2018), the study reveals how memory, and ancestral knowledge can function as sites of cultural preservation and resistance. By critically analyzing my own journal entries and familial practices, the research significance illuminates the transformative potential of reclaiming indigenous knowledge and challenging systemic educational oppression in Mexican Chicano Mestizo communities.

Author

• Miguel Mendoza, University of Texas - Rio Grande Valley