Latina Urban Education: At the Crossroads of Intersectional Violence

Abstract

This chapter investigates how urban education reproduces oppressive colonial legacies and how the Latina body experiences the schooling process. We especially retrace the ideological, methodological, and dialectic footing of the (mis)education of Latinas – a purposeful project rooted in racist heteronormative patriarchy ideology. Using an intersectional framework to provide a multidimensional analysis, we recognize Latinas as active agents of their educational experiences. We read the Latina body through a mind-body-spirit lens to unpack the embodiment of urban Latina schooling. We investigate how educational “crisis” scholarship primes Latinas as objects, barriers, and adversaries to Latinx educational achievement and how her sexed-gendered-sexualized identity is misrepresented by these scholarly discourses. We also deconstruct the ideological footings of urban education systems and practices to expose an investment in the subjugation of Latinas through an onslaught of binarist dichotomies, particularly gender and sexuality. We end this chapter with a proposal of intersectionality as a social justice project rooted in resistance, transformative pedagogies, the disruption of binaries, and towards a revolution in thought, practice, and theory.