Chapter 9: Las Traviesas: Critical Feminist Educators in Their Struggle for Critical Teaching

Traviesa is my nickname for my 9-year-old daughter. She doesn’t like it. She thinks it means bad girl, but it’s more complicated than that. Traviesa was a word I learned from my students at Roosevelt High School in East Los Angeles, California. The word was both one of derision and one of pride. A student arriving late to class could get a hissed and smiling “traviesa!” from a classmate. But, a student delivering a powerful rebuke to a critical comment in a class discussion could also get a smiling “traviesa. “ It is a tease and a term of respect. Though it is not exclusively used in the feminine, it is mostly. The more time I spent as a teacher and educator, in classrooms, schools, and the neighborhoods of East Los Angeles, the more I came to understand the true meaning of traviesa. The traviesas will hold the line, keep the door open for a friend with their own bodies, extend the hand when no one else will, ask the difficult question, refuse to follow unjust demands, and from a teacher’s perspective easily be misunderstood as a pain, as a troublemaker.