A Borderlands View on Latinos, Latin Americans, and Decolonization

Rethinking Mental Health

By (author) Pilar Hernández-Wolfe

Publication date:

14 February 2013

Length of book:

158 pages

Publisher

Jason Aronson, Inc.

ISBN-13: 9780765709318

Latinos in the U.S. and Latin Americans are a combination of diverse populations that differ on a range of factors including length of time in the country, migration background, ethnicity, geographical location, socio-economic status, and so on. The reader will find perspectives of those of us who live in the borderlands—that is, those of us whom Gloria Anzaldúa identified as Mestizas, who inhabit the intersticios, the spaces in between souls, minds, identities, and geographies. This book assists new generations of Latino/as and of those involved in Latino Culture and Latin America in understanding how the colonization of the Americas is still tied to current issues of migration from the South to the North and how mental health practices have been created and maintained from the wound of coloniality. It offers a rich and alternative foundation for approaching trauma, identity, and resilience through the integration of a decolonization paradigm, borderlands theory, and social justice approaches in couple and family therapy.

Preface
Acknowledgements
Chapter 1. Borderland Experiences: Migrations and Crosslinks
Chapter 2. A New Musical Score, a Horizon, and Possibilities for Meaning Making:
A Decolonization Paradigm
Chapter 3. Nepantla: A Borderland Epistemology
Chapter 4. Trauma, Resistance/Resilience, and the Colonial Difference
Chapter 5. Just and Loving Relationships Heal
Chapter 6. Thoughts Unfinished
Appendix A
References
Index
About the Author

“Therapy, at best, is about transformation. Dr. Hernandez-Wolfe's brilliant book provides nepanthla, the territory for transformation—an in-between space in which, through individual and collective reflection, we can see ourselves and each other more clearly. By showing how macro-societal processes are enacted in the micro-processes of everyday life, she challenges taken-for-granted practices and offers pathways for new therapeutic action. I highly recommend this book for clinicians of all levels of experience.”