Young, Gifted, and Brown: Ricanstructing Through the Autoethnopoetic for Critical Diasporic Puerto Rican Pedagogy

What has made the Puerto Rican Diaspora in the United States flourish and their lived experience meaningful? How can a diasporic people connect with and affirm their roots in an educational system far from home? A "Young,... [ view full abstract ]

What has made the Puerto Rican Diaspora in the United States flourish and their lived experience meaningful? How can a diasporic people connect with and affirm their roots in an educational system far from home? A "Young, Gifted and Brown" pedagogy is a journey of two directions converging, using a performative approach toward facilitating understanding of how do students of the Puerto Rican Diaspora in higher education make sense and meaning of their everyday. Pedagogy is performative and political, and in this poetic inquiry, I have related to them as a professor and a poet. Research done creatively is critical toward the development of Critical Pedagogy for Puerto Rican Diaspora. This composition is a path through, and a celebration of, poetic performance ethnography, where students reflect on their lives through the AutoEthnoPoetic. This artistico-pedagogical process is deeply informed by Eugenio María de Hostos’ moral social and José Martí’s poetic pedagogy as well as race critical educational theories, including Culturally Relevant Pedagogy. Through an AutoEthnoPoetic journey through puertorriqueñidad, “Puerto Rican-ness,” or sense of being Puerto Rican, there are lessons for students and educators on how poetic performance ethnography can facilitate success and alegría (happiness) and inspire, motivate, and celebrate in an education system where diaspora are present. In honor of this approach, I weave my research findings and poetry together to reflect the strong tradition of research in education and poetry in Puerto Rican Studies that, taken together, can be the basis for a rich transdisciplinary, and creative diasporic pedagogy.