Decolonial Voices brings together a body of theoretically rigorous interdisciplinary essays that articulate and expand the contours of Chicana and Chicano cultural studies.

This book argues that Linguistics, in common with other disciplines such as Anthropology and Sociology, has been shaped by colonization. It outlines how linguistic practices may be decolonized, and the challenges which such decolonization poses to linguists working in diverse areas of Linguistics. It concludes that decolonization in Linguistics is an ongoing process with no definite end point and cannot be completely successful until universities and societies are decolonized too. In keeping with the subject matter, the book prioritizes discussion, debate and the collaborative, creative production of knowledge over individual authorship. Further, it mingles the voices of established authors from a variety of disciplines with audience comment and dialogue to produce a challenging and inspiring text that represents an important step along the path it attempts to map out.

In the wake of #MeToo, Black Lives Matter, #rhodesmustfall and the Covid-19 pandemic, this groundbreaking book echoes the growing demand for decolonization of the production and dissemination of academic knowledge. Reflecting the dynamic and collaborative nature of online discussion, this conversational book features interviews with globally-renowned scholars working on language and race and the interactive discussion that followed and accompanied these interviews. Participants address issues including decoloniality; the interface of language, development and higher education; race and ethnicity in the justice system; lateral thinking and the intellectual history of linguistics; and race and gender in a biopolitics of knowledge production. Their discussion crosses disciplinary boundaries and is a vital step towards fracturing racialized and gendered epistemic systems and creating a decolonized academia.

"The Decolonial Imaginary is a smart, challenging book that disrupts a great deal of what we think we know... it will certainly be read seriously in Chicano/a studies." -- Women's Review of Books Emma Pérez discusses the historical methodology which has created Chicano history and argues that the historical narrative has often omitted gender. She poses a theory which rejects the colonizer's methodological assumptions and examines new tools for uncovering the hidden voices of Chicanas who have been relegated to silence.

Voices from the Ancestors brings together the reflective writings and spiritual practices of Xicanx, Latinx, and Afro-Latinx womxn and male allies in the United States who seek to heal from the historical traumas of colonization by returning to ancestral traditions and knowledge. This wisdom is based on the authors’ oral traditions, research, intuitions, and lived experiences—wisdom inspired by, and created from, personal trajectories on the path to spiritual conocimiento, or inner spiritual inquiry. This conocimiento has reemerged over the last fifty years as efforts to decolonize lives, minds, spirits, and bodies have advanced. Yet this knowledge goes back many generations to the time when the ancestors understood their interconnectedness with each other, with nature, and with the sacred cosmic forces—a time when the human body was a microcosm of the universe. Reclaiming and reconstructing spirituality based on non-Western epistemologies is central to the process of decolonization, particularly in these fraught times. The wisdom offered here appears in a variety of forms—in reflective essays, poetry, prayers, specific guidelines for healing practices, communal rituals, and visual art, all meant to address life transitions and how to live holistically and with a spiritual consciousness for the challenges of the twenty-first century.

The world is in the midst of a storm that has shaped the history of modernity along a double fracture: on the one hand, an environmental fracture driven by a technocratic and capitalist civilization that led to the ongoing devastation of the Earth’s ecosystems and its human and non-human communities and, on the other, a colonial fracture instilled by Western colonization and imperialism that resulted in racial slavery and the domination of indigenous peoples and women in particular. In this important new book, Malcom Ferdinand challenges this double fracture, thinking from the Caribbean world. Here, the slave ship reveals the inequalities that continue during the storm: some are shackled inside the hold and even thrown overboard at the first gusts of wind. Drawing on empirical and theoretical work in the Caribbean, Ferdinand conceptualizes a decolonial ecology that holds protecting the environment together with the political struggles against (post)colonial domination, structural racism, and misogynistic practices. Facing the storm, this book is an invitation to build a world-ship where humans and non-humans can live together on a bridge of justice and shape a common world. It will be of great interest to students and scholars in environmental humanities and Latin American and Caribbean studies, as well as anyone interested in ecology, slavery, and (de)colonization.

Our Voices II: the DE-Colonial Project will showcase decolonizing projects which work to destable and disquiet colonial built environments. The land, towns, and cities on which we live have always been Indigenous places yet, for the most part our Indigenous value sets and identities have been disregarded or appropriated. Indigenous people continue to be gentrified out of the places to which they belong and neo‐liberal systems work to continuously subjugate Indigenous involvement in decision‐making processes in subtle, but potent ways. However, we are not, and have never been cultural dopes. Rather, we have, and continue to subvert the colonial value sets that overlay our places in important ways.

Cultura y Corazón is a research approach and practice that is rooted in the work of Latinx and Chicanx scholars and intellectuals. The book documents best practices for Community Based and Participatory Action Research (CBPAR), which is both culturally attuned and scientifically demonstrated. This methodology takes a decolonial approach to engaging community members in the research process and integrates critical feminist and indigenous epistemologies. Cultura y Corazón presents case studies from the authors’ work within the fields of education and health. It offers key strategies to working in partnership with marginalized Latinx communities that are grounded in deep respect for the communities’ cultures and lived experiences. This book is intended for students, researchers, and practitioners who want to work with vulnerable populations through a community-based approach that truly respects and integrates culture, values, and funds of knowledge.

For too long feminism and multiculturalism have been co-opted by the forces they seek to dismantle. However, in this manifesto, Francoise Verges argues that feminists should no longer be handmaidens of capitalism, colonialism and imperialism and fight the system that created the boss, built the prisons and polices women's bodies.Attuned to the temporalities of contemporary struggles, the book incorporates issues such as Eurocentrism, whiteness, power, inclusion and exclusion, within feminist discourse. Throughout we touch upon feminist and anti-racist histories, as well as assessing contemporary activism, including #MeToo and the Women's Strike.Centring colonialism and imperialism within intersectional Marxism, this is an urgent demand to free ourselves from the capitalist, imperialist forces that oppress us.

Through the presentation of visual and textual insights, this book chronicles the experiences of Quechuan bilingual college students, who strive to maintain their ethnolinguistic identity while succeeding in Spanish-centric curricula. The book merges decolonial theory and participatory action research in pursuit of mobilizing Indigenous languages such as Quechua and depicts the ways in which these Andean college students deal with limited opportunities for Quechua-Spanish bilingual practices. It provides an overview of their collective efforts to mobilize Quechua in higher education, efforts which will help all who read it understand the maintenance of the Quechua language beginning at the grassroots level. The author advocates for engaging language researchers in critical collective forces at the core of conditions which promote Quechua in higher education, a collective effort which must reflect decolonial, non-Eurocentric, non-fundamentalist Indigenous concepts in combination with action-oriented cultural wealth for the benefit of minoritized languages and peoples.