Transgenerational educacion: Latina mothers' everyday pedagogies of cultural citizenship in Salt Lake City, Utah

This critical ethnographic study used Chicana/Latina feminist theory and Latina/o cultural citizenship to explore and examine how Latina mothers (their epistemologies, bodies, and lived experiences serve as pedagogical devices) transmit and co-create knowledge intergenerationally for and with their children. The primary focus of the study was to find out how Latina mothers enact their responsibility to fight for basic social needs and the various forms of activism that take place through their participation in their children's education and educacion in their community, school, and homes. Understanding how teachable moments spring from the mothers' everyday rituals, from their practices, silences, the mystery of their lives, and their doing, was foundational to this critical ethnography. Latina mothers' bodies become a pedagogical device as they negotiate what knowledge to pass on to their children and with/among each other. Latina mothers inculcate more holistic forms of education (educacion) to their children through pedagogies of the home. Enacting cultural signifiers and practices of [in]formal education that take place in Latina/o homes through Latina mothers' bodies demonstrated how everyday teachings through their quotidian doing are passed on to their children. Latina mothers' stories and lessons are taught to their children through oral histories, their everyday rituals and practices, the stories that arise from interactions entre mujeres (among women), and in sharing their own testimonio. The findings from this study acknowledge how Latinas' everyday cultural-familial-communal practices serve to inculcate sobrevivencia (survival) lessons and transgenerational knowledge, education, and educacion, that can serve their children to claim rights and create spaces of belonging in Salt Lake City, Utah. The findings elaborated and expanded the concepts of trangenerational educacion and pedagogies of cultural citizenship.