This first-of-its-kind volume bridges Chicana/Latina feminist perspectives with education and offers innovative ideas on teaching and learning, and ways of knowing. This groundbreaking volume explores both Chicana/Latina feminist definitions of teaching and learning, and ways of knowing in education. The book’s contributors—Chicana/Latina feminist scholars—reinterpret the field of education as inter- and transdisciplinary and connected to ethnic, racial, and womanist scholarship. They examine mujer- (women-) centered definitions of pedagogy and epistemology rooted in Chicana/Latina theories and visions of life, family, community, and world. Armed with the tools of Chicana/Latina feminist thought, the contributors link cultural studies theories to critical/feminist pedagogies by re-envisioning the sites of pedagogy to include women’s brown bodies and their agency. Dolores Delgado Bernal is Associate Professor of Education and Chicana/o Studies at the University of Utah. C. Alejandra Elenes is Associate Professor of Women’s Studies at Arizona State University. Francisca E. Godinez teaches Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at California State University at Sacramento.

This first-of-its-kind volume bridges Chicana/Latina feminist perspectives with education and offers innovative ideas on teaching and learning, and ways of knowing.

This first-of-its-kind volume bridges Chicana/Latina feminist perspectives with education and offers innovative ideas on teaching and learning, and ways of knowing.

As the first scholarly book of its kind, this edited volume brings together educational leadership scholars and practitioners from across the country whose research focuses on the unique contributions and struggles that Latinas across the diaspora face while leading in schools and districts. The limited though growing scholarship on Latina administrators indicates their assets, particularly those rooted in their sociocultural, linguistic, and racial/ethnic backgrounds, their cultura, are undervalued in research and practice (Hernandez & Murakami, 2016; Martinez, Rivera, & Marquez, 2019; Mendez-Morse, 2000; Mendez-Morse, Murakami, Byrne-Jimenez, & Hernandez, 2015). At the same time, Latina administrators have reported challenges related to: isolation (Hernandez & Murakami, 2016), a lack of mentoring (Mendez-Morse, 2004), resistance from those who expect a more linear, hierarchical form of leadership (Gonzales, Ulloa, & Munoz, 2016), balancing varying professional and personal roles and aspirations (Murakami-Ramalho, 2008), as well as racism, sexism, and ageism (Bagula, 2016; Martinez, Marquez, Cantu, & Rocha, 2016). The impetus for this book is to acknowledge, explore, theorize, and expand our understanding of how Latinas’ success as school and district leaders is informed by such gifts, including their prioritizing of familia and communidad, relationship building, reciprocity, and advocacy, in the face of such challenges. Thus, this volume covers four topical areas: 1) Testimonies and reflections from the field/Testimonios y reflexiones del campo, 2) Leading in relationship, comadrismo, with and for community/Liderazgo en relación, comadrismo, con y para la omunidad, 3) School community leaders(hip)/Lider(azgo) escolar y comunitario 4) Learning from the experiences of others/Aprendiendo de las experiencias de otras.

Telling to Live embodies the vision that compelled Latina feminists to engage their differences and find common ground. Its contributors reflect varied class, religious, ethnic, racial, linguistic, sexual, and national backgrounds. Yet in one way or another they are all professional producers of testimonios—or life stories—whether as poets, oral historians, literary scholars, ethnographers, or psychologists. Through coalitional politics, these women have forged feminist political stances about generating knowledge through experience. Reclaiming testimonio as a tool for understanding the complexities of Latina identity, they compare how each made the journey to become credentialed creative thinkers and writers. Telling to Live unleashes the clarifying power of sharing these stories. The complex and rich tapestry of narratives that comprises this book introduces us to an intergenerational group of Latina women who negotiate their place in U.S. society at the cusp of the twenty-first century. These are the stories of women who struggled to reach the echelons of higher education, often against great odds, and constructed relationships of sustenance and creativity along the way. The stories, poetry, memoirs, and reflections of this diverse group of Puerto Rican, Chicana, Native American, Mexican, Cuban, Dominican, Sephardic, mixed-heritage, and Central American women provide new perspectives on feminist theorizing, perspectives located in the borderlands of Latino cultures. This often heart wrenching, sometimes playful, yet always insightful collection will interest those who wish to understand the challenges U.S. society poses for women of complex cultural heritages who strive to carve out their own spaces in the ivory tower. Contributors. Luz del Alba Acevedo, Norma Alarcón, Celia Alvarez, Ruth Behar, Rina Benmayor, Norma E. Cantú, Daisy Cocco De Filippis, Gloria Holguín Cuádraz, Liza Fiol-Matta, Yvette Flores-Ortiz, Inés Hernández-Avila, Aurora Levins Morales, Clara Lomas, Iris Ofelia López, Mirtha N. Quintanales, Eliana Rivero, Caridad Souza, Patricia Zavella

While the genre of testimonio has deep roots in oral cultures and in Latin American human rights struggles, the publication and subsequent adoption of This Bridge Called My Back (Moraga & Anzaldúa, 1983) and, more recently, Telling to Live: Latina Feminist Testimonios (Latina Feminist Group, 2001), have demonstrated the power of testimonio as a genre that exposes brutality, disrupts silencing, and builds solidarity among women of colour. Within the field of education, scholars are increasingly taking up testimonio as a pedagogical, methodological, and activist approach to social justice, which transgresses traditional paradigms in academia. Unlike the more usual approach of researchers producing unbiased knowledge, the testimonio challenges objectivity by situating the individual in communion with a collective experience marked by marginalization, oppression, or resistance. This approach has resulted in new understandings about how marginalized communities build solidarity, and respond to and resist dominant culture, laws, and policies that perpetuate inequity. This book contributes to our understanding of testimonio as it relates to methodology, pedagogy, research, and reflection in pursuit of social justice. A common thread among the chapters is a sense of political urgency to address inequities within Chicana/o and Latina/o communities. This book was originally published as a special issue of Equity & Excellence in Education.

Fleshing the Spirit brings together established and new writers to explore the relationships between the physical body, the spirit and spirituality, and social justice activism. The anthology incorporates different genres of writing—such as poetry, testimonials, critical essays, and historical analysis—and stimulates the reader to engage spirituality in a critical, personal, and creative way.