Pathways to Healing BodyMindSpirit for Latina-Identified College Students, Administrators, and Faculty in Higher Education

In 2017, the Journal of Women and Gender in Higher Education (formerly known as the NASPA Journal about Women in Higher Education) published a special issue on Black women’s experiences in higher education, edited by Lori Patton, Chayla Haynes, and Natasha Croom (2017). Inspired by their efforts and deeply appreciative of their advice and guidance, I have crafted a special issue that centers the experiences of Latina-identified students, faculty, and administrators with attention to healing the fragmentation that occurs in academe. I am grateful to Amy Bergerson (former NJAWHE/JWG Editor), and Margaret Sallee and Jeni Hart (current JWG editors) for their investment in this special issue. Throughout my career, I have drawn from the work of Chicana and Latina feminist scholars who theorized about fragmentation within academe and society in general (Delgado Bernal et al., 2006; Moraga & Anzaldúa, 2002; Trujillo, 1998). Fragmentation is “a direct result of existing hierarchies in society” that deny access and opportunities for Communities of Color and Latinas in particular (Hurtado, 2003, p. 218). By claiming fragmentation, Chicana/Latina feminists uncover systemic, physical, and spiritual violence experienced through the bodymindspirit within higher education, a site of both liberation and oppression (Lara, 2002). The collective “we” of Queer Latinx/Latina/ Chicana/Puerto Rican/Mexicana/Jewish authors in this issue were successfully socialized into the academy at the cost of segmentation and compartmentalization. As a form of resistance, we uncovered the various social, psychological, and cultural locations that must be (re)crossed in higher education to put our selves back together in bodymindspirit. However, our ability to navigate the borderlands of family structures, cultural traditions, gender constructions, sexuality, and social class, as well as academe, is often ignored in larger discourses about Latinx/as/os in higher education