Rewriting Identities: Using Historicized Writing to Promote Migrant Students' Writing

Abstract

This article outlines and advocates a historicized writing approach that leads (im)migrant Latina/o and Hmong students to reflect upon, reread, and rewrite their socially and culturally situated experiences. Students explored their own identities through readings, writing, and discussion based on larger umbrella social themes such as historicality and sociality, language and culture, race and class, and gender. This exploration took place in an environment which valued hybrid language practices that valued and legitimized students' lives while fostering critical thinking around issues related to farmworker experiences. Further case study analysis of the writing and reflection of two migrant students detail the ways that students were encouraged to grapple with challenging texts that extended to an examination of the ways such texts led them to question their lived experiences and work toward individual and social transformation.