Book Club Pláticas: Reflexiones on Culturally-centered Methodologies

By Daisy Muralles and Vanessa Varko Fontana

“This pedagogy makes oppression and its causes objects of reflection by the oppressed, and from that reflection will come their necessary engagement in the struggle for their liberation. And in the struggle this pedagogy will be made and remade.”

Paulo Freire (1921-1997)

Introduction

In spring 2024, we took a popular model often used in American libraries, the book club, and added a cultural and community-building lens as part of that experience. In this article, we will share how we came to this work as PRAXISioners, and the barriers we aim to break down through our collaborative work. We will also describe how our collaboration on the book club project acted as a vehicle to hold culturally informed pláticas and what they looked like; and, finally, we also reflect on how this work allows us the space to come together with our own experiences as teachers and learners. The book club gave us an opportunity to explore the works of Latine scholars and authors, to engage in pláticas, allowing us to dive into new concepts and ideas about our culture that we had not discussed before–the unnamed things that somehow we understood as being part of our cultural identities but were not always sure of where they came from or why they existed. Throughout this article we will use the gender-inclusive “Latine” in place of the plural Latinx or Latina or Latino or Latin@, or its many variations. Created by feminist and nonbinary communities in both Latin America and the United States in the 2000s, Latine aims to describe all people, not just men or women (Guzmán, 2023).

We hope readers will walk away knowing the importance of culturally-sustaining co-curricular programs. We hope readers feel empowered to lean into their cultural-sustaining pedagogies to inform practices that are by and for BIPOC communities. We hope to inspire or mostly affirm for librarians who are already doing this cultural work, that this is important work for ourselves, our students, and campus communities.

Some of the content of this article was originally presented as, “Praxisioners Platicando: Fostering Belonging Through Culturally Centered Learning,” for Case Studies In Critical Pedagogy hosted by the Metropolitan New York Library Council (Muralles & Varko Fontana, 2024). The “Case Studies in Critical Pedagogy” event was a primer for learning about and thinking about anti-colonial theory and pedagogy. This article hopes to expand the reflective process of that presentation.

Context and Positionality

We are both Latine educators at California State University – East Bay, a higher education institution. Cal State East Bay is one of 23 campuses in the California State University (CSU) System. In 2024, it was ranked 13th in the USA Today Most Diverse Universities, and listed in the top 2% by CollegeNet.com in the Social Mobility Index, among other awards and recognition (Cal State University East Bay, 2024). Additional facts from the 2024 report include that Cal State East Bay has a female population of 59.3%, 57.1% are first generation college students, and 40.9% of undergraduates identify as Latinx. Cal State East Bay is also considered a commuter campus. In an internal Parking and Transportation Services report (FY 22-23), from 581 (65%) of undergrads, most students commuted over 5+ miles to get to campus with 119 reporting they commute for more than 30 miles to get to campus (Parking and Transportation, 2023). These are important demographics to keep in mind as our target audience was to reach Latine women on our campus.

Specifically, we are a Latinx student success coordinator and a Latinx librarian navigating relationships, politics, changing leadership, ongoing financial hardship, and more at a Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI) that has received the Seal of Excellencia. Institutions that receive this national certification are recognized for their direct service to better serve Latino students, rather than the HSI designation which is based primarily on enrollment numbers (Excelencia in Education, 2024). However, we started working with each other in part because we were frustrated that “HSI” and “Seal of Excelencia” still felt like lip-service because of the ongoing financial cuts to our programs, including hearing that some of the programs that led to receiving the Seal of Excellencia were no longer going to be supported by the university.

Barriers Latine Students Face

The ongoing budget cuts, consistent news of low enrollment, and recent executive orders, such as Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing (Exec. Order No.14151, 2025), and Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity (Exec. Order No.14173, 2025) exacerbate issues of discrimination, bias, and exclusion experienced by immigrant and Latine communities pursuing higher education. And despite there being efforts to promote diversity and inclusion in higher education prior to these executive orders, Latine students continue to face barriers to fully engaging and feeling a sense of belonging on their college campuses (Manzano-Sanchez, et al., 2019; Dueñas & Gloria, 2020). This impacts the psychological well-being, academic performance, and overall college experience of Latine students (Manzano-Sanchez, et al., 2023; Fernandez, et al., 2022). Additionally, Latine undergraduates are likely the first in their families to attend college (Postsecondary National Policy Institute, 2022). Our students share with us that they often feel that they can’t fully express their problems or college experiences in their home setting, while also not being able to share the challenges they have at home with their peers.

The book club became a way of meeting these problems, seeing them, and learning directly from students about how these problems impact them and their sense of belonging. Hearing our students’ stories and connecting with those stories highlighted another ongoing problem in higher education. We hear these individual stories and recognize them as stories of resilience and hope. We see the problem-solving from our students and recognize that we have a shared struggle with them, that as Latine women in higher education, we still share these similar experiences in our academic journeys as well. We are reminded that before March 2022,  there was no Latinx Student Success Center. We are reminded that there has never been a Latinx librarian at this institution before I was hired in 2020. But we are here now and what our roles as librarians and student success center coordinators afford us is to bring these students together, not only to us but to connect them with other Latine staff and faculty, to learn from our shared experiences and support each other. We also recognize that as Latinx educators we hear ourselves saying similar things. Both of us have experienced imposter syndrome (Brown, 2023), vocational awe (Ettarh, 2018), or the feeling like we are the “the only one” (Pierre, 2024). But the book club brought us together.

Where we are coming from

In our work, we remind ourselves and each other that we need to keep supporting our cultural selves, as Latine educators and cultural workers in higher education, to be able to welcome and support our racially and ethnically diverse students. Below we provide more information about where we are coming from to help readers understand how we came to this point in our work. We hope to share a bit more about how together, through the book club, our exploration of plática methodology, and our ongoing reflective practice, we have begun to more systematically explore how our partnership with the University Library and the Latinx Center can work towards building culturally sustaining, co-curricular spaces for our students.

Daisy: Born and raised in a primarily immigrant community in a Black and Hispanic neighborhood in Central Los Angeles, I was one of four daughters to Guatemalan immigrants. My parents ingrained in me that education was a priority. For this reason, my father, in an effort to improve our educational attainment and social welfare (there was a lot of substance abuse and gang violence in our neighborhood), moved us to the San Fernando Valley. We were no longer in a familiar environment of primarily Black and brown folks, but as the demographics of our new community changed, and our field of view grew, we were exposed to more diverse communities. This continued throughout my life and several years later, while working as a staff member at an archive, I was introduced to the California Ethnic and Multicultural Archives, curated by Salvador Güereña. I did not find an exact cultural representation of my experience in the different collections within this archive, but I did see something that went beyond. I began to expand my understanding about the shared immigrant experience, about being poor, and coming from a working class family. I felt the “ni de aqui, ni de alla” feeling across silkscreens, postcards, and art work from Chicanx/Latinx, Native American, Asian American and African American artists but something else as well. My cultural self was not necessarily exactly represented but there was some other visual articulation that represented the neighborhoods I grew up in, the food we ate, the familiar figures in our lives.

Fast forward to my current position in the East Bay, where I am the only Latina in my department of 12, I was feeling the cultural disconnect again. Despite being in an HSI/Seal of Excelencia receiving institution, I felt very much like the only one. It was not until a presentation with the Chicanx/Latinx Staff and Faculty Association that I was able to connect to other Latine faculty members. It was through a relationship with one very special Latina faculty member (thank you, Professor Crystal Perez), through her sisterhood, that I was able to meet and befriend other Latine folks on campus, which thank goodness, also included Vanessa. What started off as first meeting in events and attending each other’s workshops and programs turned into hanging out to de-stress, in addition to recommending courses and making student referrals to each other. And through these encounters we finally realized we could be working more closely together because being together encouraged us to do the outreach and programming we wanted to do to serve our Latine student community with our authentic selves.

Vanessa: I was born and raised in Los Angeles county in the 1980s and ‘90s to a Salvadoran mother and Guatemalan father. Within four years my father died, which began my experience being raised by a single mother and later embracing my identity as a fatherless child. Along with this identity shift came the new reality of balancing suburban living and inner city experience. This looked like adjusting to a private school culture as a Spanish-speaking child during the week and staying connected to family and culture headquarters that remained in the heart of an urban mecca on the weekends. Simultaneously, my family chose the route of acculturation and silencing the painful history of our roots in El Salvador which included poverty, civil war, and violence. While the awareness came later, it is clear that these early experiences became a foundation for the career in education that I later embarked on and have embraced for over twenty years. What I came to learn is that this duality mirrored the journey unfolding as a first generation Latina in the US. The feeling of “ni de aqui, ni de alla” explained my struggles as a daughter of an immigrant, a fatherless child, and the choice to develop as a social justice educator and academic scholar. I realized that my liberation would come with learning my history and asking questions to better understand my ancestors, their pain, and their radical resistance. This realization led me to find a degree focused on activism and social change from New College of California and the space to learn from various social movements, including those in El Salvador. As my undergraduate studies offered me the historical and theoretical framework to my early experiences and observations, it was the community work I delved into while studying that provided the additional layer of self awareness and commitment to social justice education.

Personally, my first generation experience meant working 40+ hours a week while maintaining my path towards graduation. These experiences included the typical retail student jobs as well as entry level jobs in education and youth development programs. The non-profits that I connected with offered me additional knowledge and theories such as harm reduction, youth development, positive sexuality, and anti-oppression. As I earned my bachelor’s degree and continued my professional career in non-profits and schools, I recognized the importance of mentorship and guidance. It was also illuminated that when this connection was created with fellow Latine professionals, it added a unique layer of support and understanding that has been essential to my professional and personal goals towards healing and liberation. Hearing their stories, feeling their support, and creating communities helped redirect my professional development to healing centered engagement instead of the typical burnout path that many of us educators experience as we navigate the bureaucracy and institutional oppression that exist at every level in education (Ginwright, 2018). When I arrived at CSUEB as the inaugural Latinx Student Success Center (LSSC) Coordinator, I approached the role with the intention to build community throughout campus and find like-minded individuals. This mindset led me to connect with Latinx professors in the English department with the intention to collaborate on campus events. These successful partnerships led to professional collaborations that would become friendships. Naturally, this camaraderie and safety created a space to share ideas and thought partnership on continuing to build together as individuals and as professionals on campus. When I met Daisy and learned of our shared Guatemalan and San Fernando Valley roots, it felt like a familiar and comfortable space with a cosmic push to create a collaborative project with the library and LSSC. This was proven by the ease and natural flow this project came to be and through the healing, powerful, conversations with each other and student participants.

Becoming PRAXISioners

In our work, we have begun to adopt the term PRAXISioner in referring to our efforts to address systemic problems experienced by the individuals we work with, the communities we aim to uplift and support, and ourselves. A PRAXISioner reframes the practitioner through praxis. A PRAXISioner is thus embedded and is concerned with the history, needs, and aspirations of the community towards self-determination and actualization. The PRAXISioner is continuously studying and sharpening their analysis by deepening their ongoing learning and self-reflection of critical theories; the PRAXISioner understands the affirming and healing potential of their work especially through historizing, problematizing, and reframing (Reyes, 2021). Reyes (2024) further shares that a PRAXISioner:

… is to be of concrete help to my local and global community in our struggle for community preservation and liberation…rooted in [Paulo] Freire’s conception of praxis, which involves engaging the language of critique to problem-pose one’s material conditions within a cycle that includes engagement with critical knowledge/theory, self-reflection, dialogue, and action.

When the opportunity for our departments to collaborate came up, we discussed how to bridge our work and the importance of including self-reflection. It was through our conversations that we saw this term of PRAXISioner as incredibly reflective and applicable to us, both in aspirational and inspirational ways. Therefore, we’ll be using PRAXISioner to describe ourselves in this process as researcher-scholars. In this process, we are continuously recognizing that we need to go through the cycle of problematizing, visualizing, reframing, and reimagining the ways in which we want to lead our practice in supporting our students and ourselves in academic spaces. We hope our reflective article describes how pláticas allows us to do this process, and we are affirmed by the growing educational research around pláticas (Bernal, et al., 2023). We also hope that by introducing this idea of PRAXISioner to our readers, that we can be more critical about how we thread the way we show up for our students in both professional and personal ways.

On Plática Methodology

In this article, we go in a few circles about our reflective process. This is primarily because it has been that type of cycle, an iterative process that we repeat. As we both learn more about plática methodology we find ourselves reading about what we are doing. As PRAXISioners, this process, the relationality, and the theorizing that takes place feel familiar. Learning about plática affirms us in so many ways by recognizing that this methodology has been enacted for centuries–in our communities–in our pedagogies of the home (Fierros & Bernal, 2016; Garcia & Bernal, 2021). In this process, we engage in reflexiones as part of an autoethnographic approach. Autoethnography seeks to describe and systematically analyze personal experience in order to understand cultural experience, which we aim to do with our reflexiones (Ellis, Adams & Bochner, 2011). We analyze our personal experiences in order to understand the broader experience of Latine cultural workers and information educators, and further our understanding of our Latine students.

To clarify, pláticas are informal conversations that take place in one-on-one or group spaces that allow us to share “memories, experiences, stories, ambiguities, and interpretations that impart us with a knowledge connected to personal, familial, and cultural history” (Fierros & Bernal, 2016; Bernal, 2006). Fierros & Bernal articulate, “…family pláticas allow us to witness shared memories, experiences, stories, ambiguities, and interpretations that impart us with a knowledge connected to personal, familial, and cultural history” (2016, p. 99). We believe that through our book club pláticas we were able to engage in familial pláticas, communicating thoughts, memories, ambiguities, and interpretations of our own experiences as Latine individuals in higher education through the discussion of culturally relevant readings, songs, and artworks. By allowing our conversations to shift where they needed to go when they did, it opened us up to explore those familial spaces. The readings shared brought personal, family, and community stories from participants. These stories about lived experiences, family traditions, and community connections were our book club anchors. We began to realize we were engaging in the practice of plática because we were building relationships with each other, honoring each other’s stories, and “find[ing] that pláticas beget other pláticas” (Guajardo & Guajardo, 2013).

A vivid example of engaging in the practice of plática emerged from the reading of “My mother is the first one in her family to leave the Dominican Republic for the United States” (Acevedo, 2023, p. 181). We started with first engaging in reactions and first impressions and quickly discovered that all twelve of us connected and had stories about preparing plátanos and eating different plantain dishes. We quickly began to discuss the recipes but primarily what sides we ate with our plantains. We shared the regions of our ancestors and the impact they had on the plantain dishes we enjoyed while never really knowing about their history. As the plática conversation continued, the topics organically flowed into a conversation about poverty and the socioeconomics of food. These conversations taught us about our different lived experiences and how we all came to be in this same room together. This realization was a reminder of the power in our individual and shared history as Latine folks in the United States.

The moments occurred throughout all of our sessions. These sessions happened each week, and our conversations evolved to deeper topics as the weeks progressed. We recognized that our pláticas were a teaching and learning process and a teaching and learning tool. We were “contributors and co-constructors of the meaning-making process” in our pláticas (Fierros & Bernal, 2016, p.111). The pláticas allowed us all to engage in a hopefully familiar way of learning, to collect and synthesize data from and with each other by ways of reflection, and to extend our ways of knowing through and with each other. In our book club pláticas, we exchanged knowledge, and sometimes it felt like we were building new knowledge of navigating that crosswalk between home and higher education. This meant that our pláticas were healing; they were open and vulnerable spaces that allowed us to look at ourselves individually and collectively as Latine folks in academia. Much of this was because of the location of our conversations as scholars in higher education coming together, opening up, and relating while we have a shared experience.

Project Overview

From creating community to developing a research idea

In the fall of 2023, Daughters of Latin America (2023), edited by Sandra Guzmán, was going viral on social media. Our personal excitement to share Daughters of Latin America (DOLA), combined with the expressed interest that we heard throughout the semesters from students looking to build a community connected to their academics, gave us the idea of a book club. The book club format felt like the right  vehicle to lead us to our destination of community building, a sense of belonging, and learning more about our culture. We used the basic structure of a book club by choosing a book, creating a meeting schedule, reading and discussing the works presented in the book. The book club really was the container we were looking for to bring us together. Using our connections with various students and student organizations, we anticipated forming an inclusive environment where folks could come together, meet other students and make new connections.

The anthology is a great introductory work to learn about women authors and different styles of the written word, from poetry to essay to short story, ranging throughout history and the Latin American diaspora. The book also lent itself to align with Women’s History Month and the work we were each already doing in our primary roles on campus. But, we knew we were going to host a different kind of book club. Guzmán encourages readers to “read from front to back, back to front, or open.. at any page. It’s also meant to be read while listening to songstresses of the Americas – from salsa Queen Celia Cruz to Toto La Momposina, from Ile and Elza Soares to La Lupe…” (2023, p. 17). And this we did. The songstress list she provided inspired us to create a supplemental YouTube playlist that we used to showcase songs before our book talk sessions as ambience while folks got settled into the Zoom room and then highlighting the artists during the sessions to revel in their stories for inspiration.

Our approach and focus felt aligned with our values. Much like the Puente Programs, GANAS, or other culturally-based college programs, we saw that a book club would allow us a collective space to use culturally relevant pedagogies and practices, such as pláticas and PRAXISioner work (Castillo et al., 2023). This collective space where students engage in learning outside the classroom is a co-curricular environment we aim to create in all of our programming. The culturally-relevant content of the book is an important component of the book club because it featured the various Latine authors, creators, scholars, activists, and more, that served to inspire, provide examples, and representation. The diversity of these authors and literary styles provided a welcoming introduction to authors that most of us had never had the chance to explore until now. Additionally, the supplemental content that included music, sounds, and visual art and short videos to build community in the group helped us reimagine the book club experience. Much of the supplemental content we shared can be viewed on our public LibGuide. Through dialogue and thought-partnership of the content covered, this community saw, heard, and experienced how the personal is political. While our planning is student-centered, we were also able to recognize the impact that it had on us personally as Latinx professionals on campus.

Our first barrier was the financial aspect of purchasing book copies. This was important for us because we knew we wanted to use the book as an incentive for participants. Also, giving participants a book they could touch, hold, and have on their shelves to return to after our book club sessions felt much more meaningful. We looked for grants outside the institution, not trusting that we would be able to use money in our programs for a one-off book club. However, in talking to colleagues about the project, and recognizing that this could be more than just hosting a book club, we were able to purchase 15 copies of the book through a Library Faculty Research Support Grant established to help faculty in our Information Studies Department pursue their research. It was in fact at this juncture of applying for the faculty research grant where we came to realize this was something we could use to more directly study, practice, and learn from for our work as educators. We also needed funds for food, decorations, and small tokens of appreciation. For this, the Latinx Student Success Center was able to cover food for the in-person events as long as we posted the event on our campus’ public events website. We also created bookmarks in-house to accompany the book, knowing that these small details centered in celebrating Latine women were components to creating a culturally-sustaining environment for our book club.

Engaging students in co-curricular learning

It was important for us to customize the book club format to the needs of our students at our college campus. We promoted the event on the campus’ official student clubs and organization events page, the library’s official Instagram page as well as on the Latin Student Success Center’s Instagram page. We received a total of 16 interested individuals, primarily Latine women (and one male participant who showed up consistently!) and had 14 participants show up with seven undergraduates who showed up to all events. Some of the participants that had expressed interest were in fact faculty, but unfortunately most faculty interested were not able to make the book club meetings. We did, however, check-in with them about the book club and their encouragement in the work we were doing was also meaningful for our excitement.

One of the ways in which we updated the format was in scaffolding the meeting process by using a hybrid approach. Our first three meetings were online to better accommodate the schedules of our largely commuter campus. We also decided to meet in the evening, which meant that this was most likely after work and school for most folks to give everyone (including us) the flexibility to come together “after hours.” We also believed that this would influence the energy of the group, since we would presumably be more comfortable and cozy in our own spaces (i.e. in bed with a cup of tea, lounging in the living room), hopefully allowing us to be more open to sharing. Our approach for the book club program was hybrid because we held our last two sessions in person during U-Hour, a time when students are not scheduled for any classes and would most likely be available if on campus. The first in-person session was at the university library and the second in-person session was at the Latinx Student Success Center. This was intentional to encourage students who rarely come to campus, the chance to visit the university library and the Latinx Student Success Center.

We saw that coming together after meeting online deepened connections and trust established in the Zoom sessions. Students had either already met us or had gone to the Latinx Student Success Center to meet us casually before our official in-person meetings. We were excited that we had high attendance for our first in-person meeting because we thought folks would not want to come for an on-campus event. But we were beyond thrilled to hear that it was largely due to the relationship-building process that was part of our Zoom sessions prior to meeting in-person. In some cases, this was the initial connection to campus that helped them continue to find ways to build community on campus.

We did not want to follow typical book club conventions (i.e. read chapter, have comments/feedback ready, expectations to share) but we also did not want it to feel like a typical online classroom (i.e. assigning chapters to read, feeling behind if you did not understand or read the poem or essay). We tried to address these things that made us think of “stale” book club sessions or a classroom setting by reminding folks that they did not have to read the content in advance and verbally stating that we did not want to be a classroom. But we also changed the vibe by including multimedia (i.e. playing music) and casual interactive elements (i.e. talking about our day) in our virtual sessions. Not only was the content culturally-relevant to the student population we were engaging with, but we also wanted to make sure our content could be experienced in a variety of ways beyond the text. Along with our weekly reminders the readings were voluntary and that the only requirement was to show up and tune in, we shared the selected readings as PDFs both before and during the sessions. We shared our screen to show a quote or passage and highlighted things that stood out to us, which meant that a participant would still be able to review the content during the group’s discussion and provide their reflections and ideas without having read the content ahead of time. We believe that this also helped us with attendance and participation as we continued the series because the barriers to be ready for book club were removed, and we were able to provide multiple ways of engagement. Building our book club in this way allowed us to go a step further into our pláticas.

Reflecting back on how we implemented the pilot we recognize that even without funding, we can still do this type of book club. We can also imagine bringing this into a more formal classroom setting as well. It feels doable to either scale it up or simplify it because the important components were making sure the environment was culturally-sustaining through the content shared, that the vibe was casual, meaning that there was a low/no-stakes commitment and preparation, and that it focused on engaging in meaningful relationship-building pláticas. As we write this, we can imagine making a mini zine with just the readings and incorporating lyrics from the songs we hear together to make it offline. We can help a student organization do this for their own club members. We think that there are many ways that we can imagine scaffolding this book club.

Ongoing Reflexiones

The focus of this article was to dive into our reflective process as PRAXISioners while engaging in our understanding of plática methodology. We hope that we have provided some examples of how plática emerged as central to our planning, how it appeared during book club, and now, how we continue to use it in the aftermath as well. Here we see how the cycle of learning about plática methodology was actually a return to our cultural history which allows us to affirm community learning practices that empower us to understand the critical power of practical and theoretical tools we already carry from our homes. The affirming and healing potential of this work helps us understand our own histories and helps us reframe the problems and issues we experience–in this case, within higher education. Engaging in reflection has helped us understand our experiences in this process and has ultimately given us the confidence to continue the process of engaging in plática methodology. We continue to hear ourselves say we know this and we’ve been doing this. These reflective conversations have been a source of nourishment for our personal and professional practice. As practitioners, we recognize that creating these spaces benefits our students and ourselves–academically, personally, and professionally–both in the classroom and beyond. To anchor our planning, process, and praxis, it is critical that we are intentional about how we continue to connect with plática as a transformative qualitative inquiry process and methodology (Carmona, et al., 2021).

Reflexiones post book club pilot

Below are excerpts from a plática we held on September 3, 2024, five months after our book club experience, but still before our preparation for the 2025 book club planning. We asked each other questions (Appendix A) to give us some structure and to allow us to tap into our recent and past experiences as educators in framing our book club experience. We reflected on the book club pilot from earlier in the year and realized that we would soon start planning our next iteration. Our conversation is reminiscent of the dialogue in bell hook’s “Building a Teaching Community” (1994, p. 129). hooks has been a guiding light in our educator journeys. The questions we asked each other helped us bring in our personal strengths and interests to enhance the session, but ultimately, we wanted to reflect and prioritize a sense of belonging over the planned content.

Vanessa Varko Fontana: I think for me what was cool was that it was something that started as personal excitement. Right? I got this book. Personally, I was like, “Oh, my gosh!” I was so excited to read it and share it. And I just kept thinking, “Wow! What would have happened if I read these stories when I was an undergrad?” “What would have happened if I was able to talk about stories like this with my peers – when I was going through school?” I think it also speaks to us when we start from a place of our own personal excitement, and how our work integrates with our hobbies or passions.

Daisy Muralles: Yeah, as you were sharing that, it reminded me of one of the moments that I won’t forget. It was one of our last sessions. And there was a student that was like, “it is really amazing to see you two like these two women basically collaborating and working together and bringing us together in this way.” I forget how she phrased it, but that’s what I took away, and I was like damn. I have a few questions about mentorship and like us as [Latine] women in these academic spaces, but, like her words right there at that moment just made me feel like this was so necessary. This was so needed.

VVF: This was one of those few projects that I’ve been able to share more sides of me than I can in different academic spaces like, the creative and goofy and loving to read. I think in academia, sometimes we only tap into a couple of our sides at once, and I think that for me that was really meaningful… from the art, the music, like I felt like I could bring in all these different parts, share different parts of me in the space that I don’t really get to always.

DM: And that makes me think very seriously about myself in/at our campus, and how important it is to be myself in front of our Latine students. But at the same time how necessary it was for me to have that space too with those students and with you, and so it really reminded me about what education can look like and what learning from each other outside the classroom looks like. I think it was a very important moment, and I don’t think I’ll ever forget that.

VVF: And after starting Book Club I noticed them coming by to the point where some maybe just came in once or twice, but a few more started to become regulars, and I would see them multiple times during the week. And you know that definitely helped with the relationship building, but like the resource sharing and like building, you know, community on campus. And I was able to help students or talk to them about their upcoming graduation, include them in the Chicanx Latinx Grad, talk to them about life after graduation, and I think, even hook them up with some other campus jobs. So I really appreciated how the book club allowed me to, you know, get to know students that I wouldn’t have before, and that we were able to because we met each other through the book club.

DM: We were learning so much more about that individual person. And we just got to hear different parts of who those folks were in that Zoom room and then in-person with us. And so it made it intimate. Kind of like quickly. We were able to feel intimate more readily because we were already learning so much from each other. And they didn’t have to. That was the other part. They really didn’t have to [share]. But people opened up. It wasn’t like people were giving out their whole life stories… but there was trust, and you could feel it….

We left this plática feeling refreshed and empowered to continue on this project. At the end of our plática, we asked ourselves, “What happens when people feel affirmed and seen?” From our own experience in it, and from the feedback we heard from the participants, we learned that the book club helped us bring Latine students together to engage in plática. It also showed us that by creating opportunities to engage in culturally-sustaining content with other Latine communities on campus, Latine students can become more comfortable in using campus resources, like visiting the Latinx Student Success Center, engaging in campus events, and creating opportunities to talk about their academic progress, like sharing more information about their classes with us. When we bridge personal connection with academic experiences we are able to demonstrate the intersectionality of culture in our work, no matter the major or industry. This type of information allows us to connect our students with our network of Latine scholars, instructors, advisors, and other folks we know can provide culturally-responsible communication. And we were also able to connect students with new Latine mentors and scholars, not only the ones on our campus, but the inspirational scholars, authors, creators that were showcased in our book club sessions. It was a powerful experience to witness the ripple effect on the group’s consciousness and personal reflection–how a poem led to a song, which led to a painting that was connected to our cultural roots and families, and how it allowed us to see the impact of our goals and agency to succeed and thrive. All of these were positive outcomes of the book club and motivation to continue this project.

Reflexiones a year later

Below we take another look back to our first book club experience a full year later. We try to respond to the following questions: how we felt after the first Zoom, after the first in person, and after the last one; our interpretations of the students’ feelings throughout the process; and how this affected our relationship with our students, each other, and our Latine identity.

DM: I am so glad that Vanessa and I were homies first before we became collaborators. When we first got started, I knew that our energy together would be good for a book club or podcast (this got confirmed by students as well). I feel like Vanessa gives me a different kind of confidence and I am able to be myself more readily. This is because I know Vanessa; she has my back. We have shared cultural experiences that we know about each other. During that first book club session, I was definitely nervous, had some technical difficulties because of course I don’t know how to use slide presentations when I am presenting. But knowing that Vanessa was there filled me with excitement and courage. I think in that first session, I did not consider myself a PRAXISioner; it was something in the back of my mind but it was probably not until after our second online Zoom session that I recognized my role in that space. Yes, it was one part moderator to help navigate through the content, but it was also a collaborator not only with Vanessa but with all of the participants. We had to share and be vulnerable together.

As mentioned earlier, we were surprised about the high attendance in the first in-person meeting, but by then (three sessions in) we had already formed relationships with each other. As an advisor to an academic Latina sorority, I want to see how I can continue to build that sisterhood further by leaning into the academic, professional, and lifelong learning support I aim to provide as a Latinx Librarian. I think I can continue doing that by engaging in plática in multiple spaces-being intentional about it. This also expands into the teaching that I do. In one of my courses, students complete a class podcast focusing on visual and auditory experiences. Learning from book club, I hope I can adjust the podcast for students to create their own types of liberatory teaching spaces. This process has allowed me to find myself as a scholar, recognizing that I want to learn and teach in these ways.

VVF: It was definitely a benefit that we established a rapport with each other but also we trusted our professional work ethic and followed through. In terms of the preparation we were intentional about what we could do or what each of us could offer from our departments. It was refreshing to have built an equitable collaboration that was uplifting and motivating, versus draining or unsustainable.

I was really proud we created a way to address the post-COVID low engagement on campus while introducing a new text and introducing writers throughout the Latine diaspora. As Central American Latinas, we wanted the chance to offer scholars we wish we learned about earlier in our lives. It was exciting to feel innovative and part of the solution. At the same time, I was really nervous about the Zoom factor and staring at gray screens and the impact that has on the vibe and my personal facilitation and the ability to stay engaged. I am so happy I was able to share that plan around that. Not only did we offer a way to share an image with the group while staying off screen, we were able to sprinkle a little tech tool too. I always remember when we asked folks to share images of their cultural foods, we got to see a screen of amazing delish dishes and stories. It was really cool for students not only to humor us with those asks, but really lean into it and like to appreciate it because we were not forcing folks to be on camera but we did offer a way to participate. 

I remember being nervous about reading the readings. We knew we did not want to demand reading the weekly selections but that’s the typical book club format we were accustomed to. This is when I recognized that the anthology format would help us with this. Curating each week with a combination of shorter pieces, essays, excerpts, made it less intimidating to read some or all of the selections. We also had the readings scanned and ready to share with the Zoom room. Whether students had read it before the session or during, they had the opportunity to share their reflections. Creating a familiar sequence from the first session allowed the group to build rapport through their reflections and vulnerability. I know that I felt that when students began to share their faces voluntarily, came to meet us at the library and LSSC between book club meetings, and kept showing up, reading more, and sharing. We both recognized that by the last session we barely spoke, because the conversation just flowed and the connections were sparking with minimal facilitation.

This experience has reminded me of the power of weaving cultural identities in our work as a powerful tool to help connect with students and these connections are a portion of their experience towards graduation and building a fulfilling life and how that impacts positive change in our communities and beyond.

Conclusion

As we learn about plática methodology, and build on the work of others (Fierros & Bernal, 2016; Carmona, et al., 2021; Bernal, et al., 2023), we reflect on our process. We reflect on our shared work, and what it means to develop, create, and consider new practices and methods that honor our cultural selves. These conversations help us name and be honest about how we are engaging and learning not only about plática methodology but about being PRAXISioners. We are finding the words to affirm our academic experiences and scholarship by validating our cultural practices from home. What these pláticas are doing is teaching us a new language, providing us with this opportunity to uplift our practices, blending our cultural education with this academic journey we have chosen to be on. We are reminded of the value of this process when we create these spaces, not just for ourselves but with other Latine scholars.

This process of learning from our students, learning from each other as PRAXISioners, and learning from other Latine scholars has been an affirming and empowering experience. Responses from our pilot survey reminded us of the importance of holding space for Latine students on our college campus. We heard the healing, the need to share, and the need to hear and learn from each other. This is particularly important now in this current political climate. We know we need to do this work even more because it means more, it is necessary. As we work to problematize, visualize, reframe, and reimagine our culturally-sustaining work between sessions to help us navigate this academic landscape together, we are able to see how this collaboration between the university library and the Latinx Student Success Center is beneficial to us. The collaboration allows us to center a cultural and community-building lens to a library’s book club event that we know is more than representation–it is about empowerment. Together, we are able to explore our culture and rediscover these research practices that we learned at home with our mothers, siblings, and other family. We explore these ideas in a familial space, in a culturally-affirming way, where we can laugh, cry, and be vulnerable about our various identities that are between home and school. Again, we are reminded that we need to keep supporting ourselves as Latine scholars, educators, and cultural workers, to be able to show up for our racially and ethnically diverse students. We are reminded that we need to keep creating these spaces that support and retain us because most places do not acknowledge these parts of us.

We will continue our work in understanding how we can dive deeper into the impact of culturally sustaining co-curricular spaces, pláticas, and strengthening our PRAXISioner skills. We hope that this reflection inspires other educators, librarians, and practitioners to incorporate culturally relevant practices like pláticas and reflexiones as part of their anti-colonial practices in instruction, outreach, etc. Though some methodologies are specific to certain groups, we hope it inspires folks to learn more about cultural learning practices.

We believe that through this work we are building a network with and for ourselves and our students. We are building a support system that not only touches on academic struggle but the personal as well. We remind ourselves we are not foreigners and that we can build our own spaces. We listen to each other and figure out what our students need, and also what we need. The semesters will speed up and slow down, but our personal experiences in academia allow us to connect and empathize with our students’ experiences. So we have to take the time and encourage self reflection in ourselves, and share with each other our aspirations and goals. In addition to providing guidance through a praxis framework, we have the chance to introduce organizational efforts and institutional resources to students, which means that we need to make time for our pláticas.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to acknowledge internal peer-reviewer, Brittany Paloma Fiedler, and our external peer-reviewer Veronica A. Douglas as well as the Lead Pipe Editors, including Jessica Schomberg, Publishing Editor.

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Appendix A

Questions

The following were question prompts we brainstormed to help us engage in a reflection process that occurred in the summer after the original pilot project was completed.

1. How would you rate the experience you had at these events?
2. Which parts of our book club did you find meaningful?
3. What inspired this idea of book club? The book selected?
4. How did you find yourself preparing for the book club sessions?
5. Did what you read or our conversations prompt any questions? How did you follow-up, did you investigate your questions further? (i.e. on your own, with others)
6. Please share something that you walked away with that really resonated with you and your cultural identity.
7. What new skills or knowledge did you gain from this experience?
8. How did the book club increase visibility of the LSSC, the library?
9. How did you connect to the culture (music, art, literature) celebrated and presented in the topics covered during book club sessions?
10. To what extent did you feel comfortable being yourself during book club? What contributed to your comfort level and sharing about yourself during book club sessions?
11. Is there anything you learned from each other? Is there anything that stood out/learned from the participants? What was your impression of how the participants experienced the book club?
12. Is there anything we learned about ourselves and our role as educators, role models, individuals in these bodies that are placed as mentors in this environment? In our roles as women in academia? In our roles as Latinx/Brown/Indigenous women?
13. How do we want to approach the next book club? What are some lessons learned?
14. How can someone reproduce something like this in their environment?