"We Are More Than That!" Latina Girls Writing Their Communities From Margins to Center

• In Event: Composing Futures: Children, Youth, and Teachers Dreaming Educational Justice in and Through Writing

Abstract

Purpose
Historically, Latina girls and women have used writing to raise consciousness to the lived realities of their communities and transform the conditions of their worlds. I center the voices and experiences of five Latina girls that participated in a writing program as middle and high school students. For two weeks, these escritoras [writers] created art and composed personal stories addressing the tensions they navigate as Latina girls at the intersections of age, language, and culture. Through their participation, these escritoras examined their experiences, discussed workshop activities, wrote alongside Latinas/Chicanas their age, and shared visions they had for themselves then and now.

Theoretical Framework
I center research conducted by scholars that have written and performed alongside Black and Latina girls in intentionally designed spaces (Brown, 2013; Garcia & Gaddes, 2012; Muhammad, 2012; 2014; Winn, 2011). The design of each space tends to the cultural and gendered ways of knowing and being of Black and Latina Girls to theorize an expanded view of writing, literacies, and girlhood. Additionally, the conceptualization of writing as a site of transformation, healing, and liberation is informed by writings and theories of Black and Chicana feminists Anzaldúa (1983,1999), Collins (2009), and Lorde (2007).

Methods & Data Sources
I use ethnographic case study (Dyson & Genishi, 2005) methods to highlight how escritoras used writing and art to examine their histories as self-identified Latinas with different relationships to their cultures, languages, and identities (Anzaldúa, 1999). Constant comparative methods (Glaser & Strauss,1967) were used to analyze the data set which included ethnographic field notes, girls’ art and writing, semi-structured interview transcripts, and video recording of workshops. I coded all data by hand using descriptive and in vivo coding methods (Saldaña, 2016). Throughout this process, I wrote analytical memos to process my thinking and make sense of emerging themes and categories.

Findings
Data points to the ways that girls’ participation in the program, alongside their peers, provided a space to use art, writing and storytelling to create visions of self, visions of comunidades, and visions of the world. Their visions are rooted in the rich cultural and familial resources of their homes and communities (Yosso, 2005) pointing to a legacy of strength and courage, which is intertwined in the stories they are composing. This vision is rooted within the stories and voices of their ancestors and those of the writers and storytellers whose voices have carved out a place for us in the world.

Significance
The visions and writings of Latina girls provide important insights into how they construct meaning of their lives. Our girls come from legacies of poets, storytellers, playwrights, artists, and activists who have cultivated and nurtured this in them. Our classrooms must not be spaces where these literacies come to die. If we are to leverage the writing and literacies of Latina girls, we must start by seeing and hearing them and learning from their visions – of who they are and who they are becoming – ending histories of erasure and invisibility in classrooms and society.

Author

• Tracey Terece Flores, The University of Texas at Austin