“I Try to Read to Them in Both Languages”: Bilingual Maestras’ Enactment and Embodiment of Critical Biliteracies Through Bilanguaging Love

Abstract

Drawing on life stories and classroom observations, this qualitative study examined how six bilingual maestras enacted and embodied critical biliteracies through bilanguaging love. These maestras were born, raised, and now teach bilingual education on the Texas–Mexico border. Their stories revealed contradictory and complex beliefs about literacy learning in Spanish and English, demonstrating how critical biliteracies teach children to read and write through the concept of bilanguaging love, a way of living between languages and epistemologies. Using qualitative methods like convivios and pláticas, rooted in other subaltern knowledges, the maestras articulated the nuanced realties of literacy learning. This study grounds critical biliteracies in border theories as a way of reading and writing the word and world.