Critical Spirituality: Decolonizing the Self

Abstract

At the age ofthirteen, I was straddling between being an American, Cana- dian, and a Latino. Being born in El Salvador, raised as a child in Canada, and living in the United States as an adolescent led me to consistently expe- rience movement, differences, and ambivalence when it came tomy identity formation. I lived in the in-between state of the three cultures and never felt like I belonged to any one ofthem. Due to the civil war, my family and I left El Salvador when I was very young so I barely remembered anything about my “home” country. Indelibly, being raised by immigrant parents, the Salvadorian culture was the first culture I encountered and Spanish was the first language I spoke. But things quickly changed when I started going to school in Kitchener, Ontario. My parents opted to put me in Christian schools and I was always one of the few, if not only, racialized student in these settings. It was tough.