Our Community Is Filled with Experts”

The Critical Intergenerational Literacies of Latinx Immigrants that Facilitate a Communal Pedagogy of Resistance

Bibliographic Data

ID13683222
AuthorsAlicia Rusoja (0000-0002-6110-1265, Saint Mary's College of California, corresponding author)
Year2022
Volume56
Issue3
Pages301-327
Publication date2022-02-15
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueResearch in the Teaching of English (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0034-527X • E-ISSN: 1943-2348
PublisherRoutledge (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.58680/rte202231639
OpenAlexW4381087207
LanguageEN
Citations received16
References cited21

Anti-immigrant legal violence and grassroots organizing against it have fundamentally shaped the lives of immigrant children and families in the US. This article inquires into the intergenerational literacy, teaching, and learning practices of Latinx immigrants’ political mobilization, drawing on qualitative data from a larger yearlong practitioner inquiry study that involved observant participant field notes, artifacts, photographs, and in-depth interviews with 11 undocumented and documented Latinx immigrants with whom I, a Latina immigrant, shared an organizing practice. Through analysis grounded on literacy as critical sociocultural practice, intergenerational learning, and Chicana/Latina education in everyday life, I argue that Latinx immigrants mobilize against oppression through critical literacy practices that facilitate what I theorize as a “communal pedagogy of resistance.” This is an intergenerational pedagogy enacted in communal spaces that grows from Latinx immigrants’ facultad, meaning the critical consciousness and epistemic privilege that results from living in the liminal space of the borderlands . This pedagogy views our community’s cultural, literacy, and linguistic practices as strengths and tools of resilience and resistance, and expands our definition of family and our sense of interdependence to fellow oppressed communities, teaching us to enact inclusive justice. A key takeaway is that Latinx immigrant students’ educational and literacy practices cannot be separated from those of their wider family/community, nor from their intergenerational sociopolitical struggles and expertise. Another is that intergenerational literacy and learning are bi/multidirectional. Implications include the need for educational institutions to learn from this pedagogy, and for additional literacy research into communal sociopolitical mobilization

Critical literacy · Critical pedagogy · Immigration · Liminality · Literacy · Oppression · Pedagogy · Political science · Politics · Privilege (computing · Resistance (ecology · Sociology · Anthropology · Critical Race Theory in Education · Gender Studies · Global Education and Multiculturalism · Multilingual Education and Policy

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