Feminist Liberation Practice with Latinx Women

This book unearths ancestral wisdom to address the needs of oppressed women in both the Global South and Global North. Focusing on Latinx womxn, it empowers through decoloniality, liberation, mujerismo, and nepantlismo. As such, Latinx womxn compose their testimonios, engage in critical consciousness, and commit to global liberation. Mujerismo--a dissident daughter of liberation theology--is a Latinx womanism with anti-patriarchal, anticolonial, anti-neocolonial, and antiracial-gendered colonial orientations. Mujeristas appropriate cultural/religious/spiritual symbols to construct empowering new meanings for decolonization and liberation. Feminist liberation practices assist in this process. When Latinx womxn’s immigration accentuates inhabiting the cultural borderlands, they enter Nepantla--a place in between—to reclaim themselves and to heal soul wounds and trauma. Rooted in the Nahuatl concept of collective transformation, Nepantla encourages the development of psychospiritual abilities. As Latinx womxn engage in nepantlismo, they awaken their spiritual faculties to become instruments of courage, resistance, revolution, love, and hope.

This book will be valuable to researchers, therapists, and educators interested in the practice of feminist therapy. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Women & Therapy.

Lillian Comas-Díaz works on multiculturalism, feminism, liberation, and spirituality. A private practitioner and a Clinical Professor at George Washington University's Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, she was a faculty member at Yale University Psychiatry Department, where she directed its Hispanic Clinic. Additionally, she directed the American Psychological Association Office of Ethnic Minority Affairs. The author/coeditor of 13 books, and 170 scholarly articles; Lillian received multiple awards, including the 2019 American Foundation and APA Association Gold Medal Lifetime for the Practice in Psychology.

Carrie Castañeda-Sound is the Director of the Master of Arts in Clinical Psychology with an Emphasis in Marriage and Family Therapy: Evening Format program at Pepperdine University, and a licensed psychologist in California. Her teaching and research interests include Latinx, Liberation, and Mujerista Psychologies. She directs the Language, Culture, and Gender Lab, which involves students in research in the broad areas of language, culture, and gender within the field of psychology and specifically psychotherapy.