The Power of our Mestiza Praxis: Undergraduate Chicanas Building Critical Literacy in Community to Enact Change

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Saturday 3:45 pm
  In Roundtable Session: Reimagining Educational Research for and with Latine Students

Abstract

This paper contributes empirical research on the topic of the education of Chicana activists, seeking to answer the question of ‘how can Chicanas work together to build critical literacy in order to expand our capability for activism in our communities?’ Pulling from a larger critical narrative study, this research focuses on group meetings with five participants around activism. Through an informal book club, documentary-viewing, and unstructured dialogue we created many rich opportunities to build critical literacy. In this work, we identified the concept of our mestiza praxis, a need to enact change that is firmly rooted in our mestiza consciousness, or way of seeing the world through the many borders we traverse daily because of our social conditions.

Author

• Elena Marie Marquez, Chapman University