Becoming Mujeres

OPTalkspodcastYoung Voices
Written By Open Plaza

Dr. María del Socorro Castañeda and Lupita Castañeda-Liles have a mother-daughter conversation about keeping the lines of communication open to heal intergenerational trauma

Lupita Castañeda-Liles invokes her inner Guadalupe. Image courtesy of Becoming Mujeres

 
 

In honor of Mother’s Day, OP Talks presents a mother-daughter conversation between sociologist and ethnographer Dr. María del Socorro Castañeda and Lupita Tonantzin Castañeda-Liles about keeping the lines of communication open so that we can heal intergenerational trauma. After Lupita faced some challenging times in middle school, they decided to start Becoming Mujeres, a training firm that provides workshops and seminars on mental health to Latina teens, young adults, and older women. Some of the silences that often come with intergenerational trauma are consistent, says Dr. Castañeda, who is Chief Education Officer. “That's why we need to be proactive in healing those silences…To talk about Catholicism is also to address the silences that come with growing up in that particular faith or devotion.”

Together, Dr. Castañeda and Lupita—now in her first year of high school—model how to communicate across generational lines. They talk about how to break communication barriers between caregivers and teenagers so that they can understand the social context that influences the way each approaches a situation. Dr. Castañeda encourages “parents to be open, to acknowledge, to embrace, and to see as a gift the importance of being fully open with our children.”

 
 
 

Through intimate portraits of women across three generations, María Del Socorro Castañeda-Liles depicts what it means to see family, community, and the sacred through a Mexican Catholic Imagination. Our Lady of Everyday Life powerfully demonstrates how religion works alongside race, class, gender, and sexuality to shape Chicana/Latina women's subjectivity.

—Tricia C. Bruce, author of Parish and Place: Making Room for Diversity in the American Catholic Church

 
Featured
Lupita Castañeda-Liles

Lupita Tonantzin Castañeda-Liles is Co-Founder & Chief Inspirational Officer, with her mother, of Becoming Mujeres a firm that helps Latina teens and their female caregivers to translate cultural expectations into opportunities. Lupita is the author of the forthcoming children’s book I Now Smile More. The book is about the positive aspects of having divorced parents. I Now Smile More not only tells the story about a young girl and her experience of having divorced parents but it also illustrates how she handles the experience. Besides writing, she also enjoys the outdoors, cooking with her abuelita, and playing with her dog. Lupita is a first-year student in high school. Her goal is to foster positivity among teens.

Featured
María del Socorro Castañeda

Dr. María Del Socorro Castañeda is Co-Founder & Chief Education Officer, with her teenage daughter Lupita, of Becoming Mujeres, a firm that helps Latina teens and their female caregivers to translate cultural expectations into opportunities. Dr. Castañeda is a sociologist and ethnographer. She holds a BS in Sociology from Santa Clara University and MA and PhD degrees in Sociology from the University of California, Santa Barbara. Dr. Castañeda is a Ford Foundation Fellow and the award-winning author of Our Lady of Everyday Life: La Virgen de Guadalupe and the Catholic Imagination of Mexican Women in America (Oxford University Press, 2018). Before co-founding Becoming Mujeres, she was Assistant Professor at Santa Clara University in the Religious Studies Department. Dr. Castañeda is a sought-out speaker and expert in the areas of Mexican popular Catholicism, Our Lady of Guadalupe devotion, LatinX cultural expectations, mother-daughter communication, and teenage girls and social pressures. Her research has been funded by the Ford Foundation, The Louisville Institute, Hispanic Theological Initiative, UC Mexus (University of California Institute for Mexico and the United States), Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, and The Ignatian Institute for Jesuit Education. Her work been featured in local and national newspapers, including the San Jose Mercury News and the National Catholic Reporter. She was born in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, México and immigrated to the United States, undocumented, as a child. Dr. Castañeda’s goal is to teach Latina teens and women how to transgress oppressive gendered cultural expectations and become the mujeres they were meant to be.

 
Open Plaza
Previous

Sofia's Theme Park
Next

…And the Barrio Did Not Devour Me