Maestra, Writer
Ana Linda loves to create spaces where people can claim their experiential knowledge, share their stories and learn from one another in community. In college classrooms, she guides students in unearthing the indigenous history of the Americas and helps them to recognize the living presence of our ancestral heritage. Dismantling hierarchies and binaries that create divisions within and across communities and within the human psyche is central to the decolonial and self-liberating practices that take place in her classroom. In her commitment to the work of healing generational trauma, she serves as a witness for herself and her community members, and she honors Mother Earth as the great witness who is always listening.
The recent peak in social and environmental justice movements, the boom in virtual communities born in resistance to the isolation of the global pandemic, and a personal breast cancer diagnosis in 2021 all inspired Ana Linda to shift from academic writing to creative writing. She writes to heal her own and her ancestors’ wounds, she writes to speak truth to power, and she writes to play with the creative power of language. In addition to poems and essays, Ana Linda is currently working on a collection of short stories that are inspired by her family’s experience in migrating from Durango, MX to Fullerton, CA in the early 1970s. She is the youngest of eight children and the mother of two sons.
Ana Linda completed her bachelor’s degree in Comparative Literature at UC Berkeley, then went on to conduct doctoral research on oppositional consciousness in barrio narratives to earn her doctoral degree at UC Santa Barbara. She has taught courses in literature, creative writing and ethnic studies on campuses across the Southwest, including Diné College, UNLV, and College of Southern Nevada. Currently, she has the good fortune of teaching at CSUF in her hometown of Fullerton, CA, and working as copy editor for Saint Lunita Magazine.
Read Ana Linda’s stories featured in Saint Lunita at Her Three Reflections – (saintlunita.com)
Connect with Ana Linda at https://www.instagram.com/buffalo.turquoise/
